


You Are The Blood

by sarcasticfluentry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Anal Sex, Emotionally Stunted Boys In Love, Friends With Benefits, HP Nostalgia, Hogwarts AU, M/M, Oral Sex, Quidditch, Rimming, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 12:19:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 175,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/861968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcasticfluentry/pseuds/sarcasticfluentry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A seventh-year Hogwarts AU in which Niall gets all the girls, Liam goes on a journey of self-discovery, Zayn falls in love, Harry wants something more, and Louis tries to figure out once and for all why he, a Muggleborn, was sorted into Slytherin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the longest fic I've ever written! It's finally complete. :)
> 
> At the start of the fic, Zayn, Harry, and Louis are in a threesome friends-with-benefits kind of thing at the beginning of this story, so the first sex scene is a threesome, but there is Harry/Louis and Zayn/Liam endgame and this will be the only threesome scene in the story, so if you want to skip past that part you can. The story will be told from Zayn and Louis's POV. They alternate in this chapter, but I'm going to try to stick to one POV a chapter from now on.
> 
> I really hope you like this and stick with it - it's going to be a really exciting journey. The first chapter is super smutty, just to get everyone hooked ;)
> 
> Title is the song by Sufjan Stevens.  
> 

As a seventh year student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Zayn Malik should have long ago developed the inability to be surprised.  Unfortunately, however, there are still things that manage to shock him.  Things that fall into this category include, but are not limited to, Josh Cuthbert snogging his girlfriend (Zayn never did manage to learn her name) against the wall of the tiny, single-person Hogwarts Express toilet.

“For fuck’s sake, Josh, we’re not even back at school yet!” Zayn cries, throwing his hands up.

“Mate, it’s been a long summer, let me tell you,” replies Josh, lazily detaching himself from the girl, who’s hurriedly tucking her shirt back in and straightening her yellow striped tie.

“Do you think you could, um, hold it in a little longer?  There’re, like,” Zayn does a quick headcount, “seven students waiting to use the loo.”

“Sure, sorry, Zayn,” says Josh, at least pretending to look sheepish for Zayn’s sake.  He grabs his girlfriend’s hand and shoulders past Zayn into the narrow train corridor.  Josh high-fives one of his fellow seventh-year Hufflepuffs, but the rest of the students just look murderous.

“Right, well, I’ll be going, then,” announces Zayn as the first student in line hurriedly waddles into the loo.  He turns in the opposite direction and begins to stroll down the corridor, half-heartedly looking for any students who look like they’re interested in stirring up trouble. 

Three train cars down, he finds one.  Said student also happens to be one of his best mates. 

“Zayn! Zaaaayn! I’ve been looking  _everywhere_  for you!” he hears a voice call from behind him, and Zayn turns around just in time to accept a flying hug from none other than Louis Tomlinson.

“Hey, Lou,” he greets him, hugging the shorter boy tightly.  As Zayn buries his nose in Louis’ feathery hair and breathes in his familiar smell, he realizes that Josh was right: it  _has_  been a long summer. 

“How come you didn’t come find me and Harry?  We’ve been saving an entire compartment just for the few of us, had to fight off an entire _legion_ of fifth years-”

“Oh, I’m swooning,” Zayn comments dryly, letting go of Louis and stepping back.  “I got Head Boy, remember, so I have to patrol during the train ride.  You  _did_  get my owl, right?  I tried to tell you and Haz all about it, but you know how Hakeem gets.”

“He found my house just fine,” replied Louis.  “Wouldn’t leave without a double portion of treats, but that’s normal.  God, I  _missed_  you, Zayn.  Your family just  _had_  to holiday in Pakistan for most of the summer, didn’t they?”

“I mean, it wasn’t just a random holiday, we were visiting family we hadn’t seen in years.  Plus, I got to see my old school.  Not that I missed it.”

Zayn had transferred to Hogwarts three years ago when he was just shy of turning fifteen.  His old school, Sihr Madrasah, was a traditional Middle Eastern wizarding school all by itself in the middle of the Thar Desert.  His older sister Doniya had graduated from there, and Zayn had spent a little over three years there.  It was a good wizarding education, yes, but he spent almost all of his free time writing home to his parents about how miserable he was, how he missed his friends from home, how bloody _hot_ it was, how there was nothing to do and nowhere to go outside of the palace itself, even how there were no mirrors in the boys’ lavatories.  It got to the point where Hakeem, his poor owl, downright refused to carry any letters he tried to send home, and Zayn had to resort to hapless, unsuspecting falcons from the school’s Aviary.  When his younger sister Waliyha got to Sihr Madrasah, she immediately began to send similar letters of complaint back to Bradford; eventually, his parents had relented (“At least we tried,” his dad had said) and sent the siblings to Hogwarts during Zayn’s fourth year.

“Well, Harry and I managed to get by without you,  _somehow_ ,” Louis says theatrically, placing his hand over his heart.

Zayn’s just about to say “‘Get off’ is more like it” when, out of nowhere, a massive purple bruise appears at the junction of Louis’ neck and shoulder.  Zayn jumps back, startled.

Louis looks affronted.  “Well it shouldn’t come as  _that_  much of a shock, Malik, it’s not like the world revolves around your–” he breaks off, realizing that Zayn’s bewildered eyes have been fixed on a specific spot on his neck.  “ _Bollocks_ , can you see it?”

“Yeah, it just showed up while I was talking to you,” Zayn tells him.

“I just put a Concealing Charm on it, right before I got on the train!” Louis complains.  He takes out his wand from a pocket in his robe, then looks at Zayn.  “Could you do it?  You know I’m rubbish at charms.”

“Yeah, sure,” says Zayn, taking out his own wand.  “This should just get rid of it permanently, actually.   _Maculo Evanesco!_ ”  Immediately, the purple color of the love bite seems to recede and fizzle until all that’s left is Louis’ natural tan skin.

“Thanks, mate.”   Louis gingerly rubs the spot where the bruise used to be.

“Is that from Harry, then?” Zayn asks him.

Louis looks inexplicably guilty.  “No, actually, it was, um… you remember a couple nights ago when I told you I was going out clubbing in London?  Mum had to go there for a new training workshop for nurses and she took me and the girls with, and I got my own room, so I figured nobody would notice if I snuck out at night, so… anyway, I sort of sidled up to the first nightclub I saw-” Zayn snorts loudly- “and the bouncer  _must’ve_  mistook me for a celebrity, or somebody famous, or  _some_ one, because there was this huge line all waiting to get in and he just unhooked the rope and ushered me right through. I didn’t even have to Confund him.”

“Maybe it was your arse,” Zayn suggests helpfully.

“I  _was_  wearing my red trousers,” Louis tells him.  Zayn can sympathize with the bouncer, honestly.

“So… you shagged the bouncer, then?  I didn’t know you went for the–”

“ _No!_ No, Christ.  He let me in, and after I had a few drinks I ended up on the dance floor with somebody behind me, and we were both getting kind of worked up, and then he turned me around and it was-” Louis pauses for dramatic effect- “it was  _Greg James_.”

Zayn stares at him blankly.

“Hello?  Greg James?  The host of the  _Breakfast Show?_ ”

“Oh, is that a BBC thing?” asks Zayn.

Louis looks affronted.  “Of bloody well  _course_  it’s a BBC thing, everybody knows about it–”

“Mate, wizarding families don’t listen to the BBC.  We have our own stations.”

“Oh, right, WWN and all that,” Louis scoffs.  “Well, anyway, we, um… we kind of endedupshagginginabathroomstall?”

“Sorry, what was that?  Didn’t quite catch that.”

“He – um – he fucked me in one of the bathroom stalls and gave me that giant bruise on my neck.  Zayn, people  _know who he is_ , and he was  _inside me!_ ” 

Louis looks simultaneously guilty and giddy; Zayn tries to find it in himself to be impressed, compares it to shagging – well, shagging Lee Jordan, for example, but perhaps wizarding radio presenters aren’t as venerated as their Muggle kin.

“Perhaps this story would be better suited for Harry?” Zayn suggests.  “I mean, seeing as he probably knows who this Greg James person is –”

Louis jumps to cover Zayn’s mouth, and Zayn doesn’t think he’s ever seen Louis move so fast (except maybe running to Harry’s side after Harry got splinched trying to Apparate for the first time back in sixth year).  “Shhhh!  No!  Absolutely not.  You can’t tell Harry.  That’s why I’ve been trying to cover this fucking thing up.  I… I don’t want him to know.”

Zayn stares pointedly at Louis, one eyebrow raised, until Louis lets him have his mouth back.  “Well… I got rid of the bruise, so there’s that.”

Louis nods, face red.

“Um,” Zayn continues hesitantly, “we’re not… exclusive, right?  I mean, I know the three of us kind of end up being exclusive at Hogwarts, because, like, I can’t think of anyone else I’d really like to shag besides you two lads, but during the summer…?”

“I mean, that was the plan,” says Louis.  “But while Haz and I were waiting in the compartment for you he told me he, um, he hadn’t _done_ anything with anyone else besides me.  Like, this summer.”

“So, naturally, you weren’t about to share  _your_  exploits, I guess.”

“Right, that’s when I left to come find you.” 

Neither of them say anything for several moments. 

Then Louis snaps, “Don’t look at me that way, Zayn.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Louis.” 

“You’re  _sure_  you can’t see anything on my neck?”

“I promise I got rid of it,” Zayn says.  

“You promise you won’t tell Harry?”

“Christ,  _yes_ , I promise.”

Louis nods, then abruptly changes the subject.  “So, is Safaa getting Sorted, then?” 

“Mmhmm.  I’ve no doubt she’ll get Ravenclaw too, though, she’s smarter than  _I_  was at her age.”

“Hey, people in other Houses are smart too, yeah?  Professor Malfoy always says that Slytherins are  _just_  as smart as Ravenclaws, but without all the arse-kissing.”

Zayn laughs.  “You and Harry might be just as smart as me, but the two of you are  _lazy_  little shits when it comes to schoolwork.”

“I can’t fault you there,” says Louis.  “Anyway, I should get back to Harry.  He’s all alone in our big, scary train compartment.  Although Stan, Eleanor, and Ed might’ve found him by now.”

Zayn smiles at him and pinches his cheek.  “Go cuddle him or something.  I’ll see you at the feast.”

“You have to patrol the  _whole_  time?” Louis pouts.

“Well, I guess I could maybe, um, ‘delegate’ to one of the younger prefects,” shrugs Zayn.  “I guess the point of being Head Boy is that I can tell other people what to do, yeah?”

“That’s the spirit!” exclaims Louis.  He gives Zayn a quick kiss on the cheek and turns to leave, yelping when Zayn pinches his arse.  “Oi, watch the goods!”

Zayn snorts and turns around, walking back the way he came and groaning when he notices another long line outside the toilet.  Personally, he doesn’t like a ton of excitement or disturbance in his life, but he can already tell this year is going to be an eventful one.

xxx

It’s the Saturday after the first week of classes, and it’s an hour of the morning when most of the students at Hogwarts are peacefully asleep in their own four-poster beds.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t include Louis, nor the rest of the Slytherin quidditch team.  Louis sighs as he extricates his own grudgingly-awake limbs from Harry’s warm, sleepy ones, finds a pair of pants near the foot of the bed that he awkwardly pulls on while still laying down, and pushes aside the curtains to slip out of bed.

“Seven,” he complains to Stan, who’s across the room getting dressed as well.  “Who decided to hold tryouts at bloody  _seven?_ ”

“The Quidditch captain,” Stan replies, pulling on his trousers.  “I hear he’s a raging arsehole.” 

Louis snorts.  “I hear he has terrible taste in Beaters as well.  Might need to pick a new pair this year.”

“Oi!”  A balled-up sock hits Louis in the tummy as he’s trying to pull his shirt over his head. 

“Hey, at least I’ll be able to tell how everyone plays when they’re at their physical worst.  There’s nowhere to go but up, yeah?” Louis reasons. 

“You’re actually the worst, Lou.  You’re going to have a mutiny on your hands before the season’s over if you keep this up.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not actually planning on holding  _practice_  at seven on Saturdays.  Just tryouts.”  Louis looks around for a spare bit of parchment, finds one, writes a quick note to Harry ( _“Haz, I scheduled Quidditch tryouts far too early to wake you.  I’m planning on using Z’s shower after, so you should join us when you wake up ;) xx – Lou”_ ), and then they’re out the door, rumpled and unkempt and clutching their brooms, leaving Harry peacefully slumbering away in their dormitory.  “Anybody who actually holds practice this early, and I don’t say this lightly, is a bloody idiot.”

When Louis and Stan get down to the Quidditch pitch, they discover that the number of students who have shown up is about _double_ the number they’d expected.  About half of them are also wearing red and gold rugby shirts, which happens to be quite unorthodox for Slytherin tryouts.

It turns out that Liam Payne, by Louis’s recent standards, is a bloody idiot. 

Which is unfortunate, because he’s actually one of Louis’s favorite people in Gryffindor.  They don’t interact all that much – in fact, Louis hasn’t seen him at all yet this school year – but they were both made Quidditch captains in their sixth year, and since then they’ve had a fairly healthy rivalry (although for someone who’s supposed to _return_ Louis’s snark and insults, Liam is so infuriatingly  _nice_ instead).  Liam is Keeper and Louis is a Chaser, so they get loads of chances to go head-to-head on the pitch; they’re also fairly evenly-matched in their skills, which always makes for fun Slytherin-Gryffindor contests.

What  _isn’t_  so fun is scheduling tryouts for their respective Quidditch teams at the apparently identical time of  _arse o’clock in the morning_.  Louis elbows his way through the crowd to try and find Liam, and he’s shocked when a much taller, broader-shouldered, deeper-voiced boy than he was expecting holds out a hand.

“Hi, Louis!” the boy says.  Louis squints.  This bloke still has the  _demeanor_  of Liam Payne, but his body is something straight from one of Eleanor’s copies of  _Playwitch_.  Sixth-year Liam Payne was all softened angles, round face, and gangly limbs; seventh-year “Liam Payne” has grown into himself, shorn off his mop of unruly hair into something sexy and styled, and is, for lack of a better way to put it, really fucking fit.

Louis realizes that he’s _staring_ and abruptly takes Liam’s hand.  “Liam?” It comes out as more of a question than he intended.  “How was your summer?”

“It was alright, nothing out of the ordinary.  Yours?” 

(Apparently this person is Liam, seeing as he just responded to the name.)

“Fine.  Mostly stayed at home in Donny, went to Muggle London a couple times,” says Louis.  “So, you, um… are you trying to hold tryouts right now?”

“Yeah, this lot hates me for it, but I’m trying to channel the last golden age of Gryffindor Quidditch,” says Liam.  Louis looks at him blankly, channeling all of his energy into not falling on his knees and pulling Liam’s dick out of his pants.  “Y’know, like when Harry Potter was here - he and Oliver Wood both used to hold practice really early and in all types of conditions, and they won  _so_  many matches, so that’s what I’m trying to do this year.” 

Liam gestures behind him to the huddled, sorry-looking group of students dressed in red and gold.  Louis tries to ignore the way that a vein in Liam’s neck stands out prominently when he turns his head.  The Gryffindor students keep looking at Louis’s Slytherins like they’re expecting a brawl.

“Oh, um, I was planning on doing that as well.  Holding tryouts.  Now,” says Louis, still made stupid by how  _hot_  Liam’s gotten.  He’s never wanted to lick something more than he wants to lick that birthmark on Liam’s neck.

Liam laughs.  “I’m sure we can come up with something.  Rock paper scissors?”

Most of the students look bewildered.  One of the other things that Liam and Louis have in common is that they’re both Muggleborn; when they accidentally slip up and use a Muggle colloquialism, they don’t have to worry about the other giving them shit for it.

“Sure, best two out of three?” Louis offers.

Before Liam can respond, there’s a commotion among the Gryffindor ranks as one of the students shoves himself forward. 

“Liam, mate, sorry I’m late.  What’s all the–” Andy stops abruptly at Liam’s right shoulder as he takes in the group of Slytherins in front of him.  “Tomlinson.”

“Samuels,” Louis spits, scowling.  He’ll never understand how Liam counts this absolute arsehole among his friends, and he’ll  _especially_  never understand how the bloody hell Andy Samuels got sorted into Gryffindor.  Both his parents were Gryffindors, sure, but it’s not like they managed to instill even a single shred of Gryffindor honor and decency into their son.  Maybe he bribed the Sorting Hat.

Andy takes a few seconds to survey the situation.  “Considering that Liam is the earliest riser I’ve ever known, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that we were here first.  Run along now.”

“We were just about to–” Liam starts.

“Considering that _you_ just got here, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that you don’t know the  _first_  thing about what’s going on, love,” says Louis condescendingly.

“Rock paper scissors?” Liam tries.

“I was actually the first person on the pitch,” comes Jesy’s voice from the crowd of emerald and silver behind Louis.  Louis smiles at Andy.

“Was talking about captains,” sneers Andy.  “Let the big boys have their practice, Tomlinson, you and your friends can have your playdate later.”

Louis throws his head back with laughter.  “Sorry,  _which_ house won the Quidditch Cup last year?”

“There’s no need to fight,” says Liam meekly, but he’s drowned out by the Slytherins’ cheers.

“It’s a new year,” says Andy.  “And you lot won’t be able to walk straight after we’re done with you.”

“Andy-” Liam starts.

“I rather doubt that,” says Louis, rolling his eyes and smirking.  “Why don’t you let us have the pitch for a few hours while you go try and find your dick?”  Stan snickers behind him.

“Louis-” tries Liam.

“ _Or_ , you could let  _us_  have the pitch for a few hours, and if you’re just too desperate, I’m sure you can find something else to ride,” Andy grins filthily.

The air changes instantly.

Louis is up at Andy’s throat, wand out, before anybody can do so much as blink.  He can hear Stan step up behind him, and Liam’s reached for his wand as well.  Louis mildly regrets getting his friends involved, but this kind of crudeness can’t go unanswered and it happens  _much_  too often.

“Liking what I like doesn’t make me a bitch, Samuels,” he says lowly, “and you’d do well to remember that.”

Andy seems to be grappling for a response.  Before he can return fire, the silence is broken by a new voice shouting, “What the devil is going on here?”

The group of students swiftly parts to reveal an extremely disheveled Professor Malfoy making his way over to them.  He’s still wearing the clothes Louis saw him in yesterday, his normally gelled-back platinum blond hair is sticking up all over the place, and he smells strongly of Firewhiskey.  Louis chooses not to comment on this, instead lowering his wand and raising his hands in both deference and greeting.  “Morning, Professor.”

“Morning, Louis,” says Professor Malfoy.  “Payne.” 

Liam smiles.  “Good morning, Professor!”

“Anybody want to explain this situation to me?” asks Malfoy. 

“Oh, you know,” says Louis breezily, “nothing unusual.  Liam and I trying to have civilized conversation, Samuels ruining it by making fun of my sexuality, me defending my honor.  Standard Saturday morning, I’d say.”

“He fuckin’ started it–” exclaims Andy.

“Payne,” Malfoy cuts him off with a wave of his wand, “is this true?”

Liam looks torn between telling the truth and protecting his friend.  Louis would, under most circumstances, lie through his teeth about things like this, but Liam is  _Liam_ , so he says, “Yes, Professor.”  Andy shoots him a glare.

“My office, Samuels,” says Malfoy.  “Why are all of you here, anyway? You should be in bed, the lot of you.”

“Louis and I both scheduled Quidditch tryouts for seven today,” Liam tells him.

“Merlin’s bollocks,” swears Malfoy.  “Well, Gryffindor, thanks to your exceptionally tolerant teammate here, you’ll be taking the pitch second.  Come back at ten.”

The Gryffindors turn and begin to shuffle away in a sea of red and gold, grumbling under their breath.

“You’re lucky I don’t deduct points!” Malfoy yells after them. 

“Rough night, Professor?” Louis asks Malfoy.  The two of them have been close ever since Louis’s second year when he professed his desire for a career in Potions. 

However, they apparently aren’t  _this_  close.  The corners of Malfoy’s mouth quirk up, but all he says is, “Don’t push your luck, Tomlinson,” and departs, dragging Andy with him.

Liam stays behind and leans in close to Louis.  “Sorry about Andy, mate.  He can be a right arsehole sometimes.”

Louis laughs.  “ _Sometimes_?  S’alright, Liam, it happens all the time.”

Liam’s frown only deepens.  “No, it’s not alright, Louis! You shouldn’t ever have to deal with that.”

“Easy for you to say.  You’re not gay,” shrugs Louis.  He isn’t even particularly upset, given how used to teasing he is. It really only comes from two or three people, too – the large majority of Hogwarts students embrace Louis and other queer students with open arms.

Liam opens his mouth like he wants to say something else, then swiftly closes it.  “Right.  Well, I’ll see you around, I guess.  Sorry again.”

“It’s nothing, really.  See you around, mate!”

Liam waves goodbye and shuffles back toward the castle after his group of prospective teammates.  Louis watches him go and ignores the way his shirt stretches across his wide shoulders and strong back.  It’s whatever, he has tryouts to run.  Who cares about Liam’s pert little bum, honestly?

xxx

Zayn is not and has _never_ been a morning person. His idea of a perfect weekend includes sleeping in past noon on both Saturday and Sunday, doing some reading, maybe going into Hogsmeade, and drinking with his mates at night. 

His idea of a perfect weekend does  _not_  include being woken up by Louis well before noon, but apparently his weekend is destined to be  _im_ perfect, because that’s exactly what happens.

“Zayn! Zaaaayn! Zaynie! Wake up!”

Zayn cracks open one eye a fraction of an amount, frowns, and closes it again. 

“Zee! I know you’re awake! I saw you open your eyes! Well,  _eye_ , really, but–”

“Merlin, Lou, what time is it?”

There’s a pause. “Half-ten, I think.  Let’s shower! I missed your shower, the ones in the locker rooms are like festering back alleys compared to yours–”

“It’s too early, Louis,” says Zayn, and turns over to face away from his entirely-too-perky friend.

“Fine,” Louis says, and Zayn can  _hear_  him pouting.  “I’ll just go get all naked and soapy in your shower by myself, then.  Enjoy your beauty sleep.”

He hears Louis pad over to the bathroom, shedding his Quidditch kit as he goes.  Zayn frowns into his pillow; they’ve only been back for a week and the allure of Louis’s naked body is still too strong to resist.  He supposes it will lessen with time, but for now Zayn just grumbles to himself, untangles his own naked self from the plush duvet, and gets up to follow after Louis, who has already turned the water on.

Zayn doesn’t get morning breath - his mouth is always fresh and clean,  _obviously_.  Even so, it doesn’t hurt to quickly brush his teeth by the sink before walking over to the shower and stepping inside.  Louis is – Merlin, he’s all wet and tan and delicious looking, with rivulets of soapy shampoo running down his body.  His eyes are squeezed shut as he holds his head under the spray of water, rinsing his hair clean.

“How was practice?” Zayn asks, reaching for the shampoo so he can wash his own hair.

“Tryouts,” Louis corrects him, wiping his eyes and reaching for the conditioner.  “And it was alright, we didn’t lose too many seventh-years so there were only a couple of spots to fill.  I know nobody’s technically guaranteed a spot, but none of the hopefuls were as good as the veterans.”  He squeezes a palmful of conditioner into his hand.  “Andy Samuels was being a dick, as usual, but then Professor Malfoy showed up and gave him shit for it – I’ve never seen him so disheveled, I expect he spent the night at the Three Broomsticks, that’s the only explanation for why he was stumbling back just after dawn…”

Zayn listens as Louis talks excitedly about his day, smiling at the fact that his own day so far has consisted solely of this shower.

“… _oh_ , and you’ll never guess who got  _right_  fit over the summer.”

Zayn really can’t imagine anyone at Hogwarts fitter than Louis, Harry, or himself, so he sounds incredulous when he asks, “Who?”

“Well, you actually might’ve seen him already,” amends Louis, working the conditioner into his hair.  “I could’ve been running into him all this past week, but fuck me if I didn’t recognize him!”

“I suppose I’m interested,” says Zayn.

“Liam Payne.”

Zayn snorts derisively.  “Lou. He  _straightens his hair_.”

“He cut it all off! Well, not all of it.  It’s, um, it’s not really like a mohawk, he still has hair on the sides–”

“A fauxhawk,” says Zayn. 

Louis stares at him. “Is that  _really_  what they’re called?”

“Yeah,” shrugs Zayn. “Anyway, so he cut his hair, big deal-”

“And he fucking grew so, like, he’s almost a head taller than me, and he has these  _ripped_  arms, right.  I could barely talk to him without imagining him fucking me up against a wall.”

Zayn, who has himself fucked Louis against a wall multiple times, knows that this is something that really gets Louis going.  He imagines a very flustered Louis trying to lead tryouts and act professional while half-hard, and it’s  _hot_.  “What would Liam have thought, hmm?” he asks, moving toward Louis and starting to corner him.  “If he knew you got hard thinking about him?”

Louis gulps.  “Never said I got hard,” he says, his voice just barely cracking.

“You had to stop yourself, though, didn’t you?  Stop yourself from getting hard where everyone could see you?”

“Zayn,” Louis whines.

“Everyone would have known how much you wanted his cock,” murmurs Zayn, smirking at him.  He and Louis both have a little bit of a  _thing_  for mild humiliation; Louis can go both ways, meaning that he sometimes loves being humiliated and sometimes loves doing it to others.  Zayn’s favorite is when they both gang up on Harry, who gets off on being humiliated, and absolutely  _destroy_  him.  “God, I can just see it, yeah? Your cock all hard in your trousers, rubbing against the broom–”

Louis’s breathing hitches and he just barely stops a little whimper from escaping.  “Stop it,” he breathes, trying to regain his composure by dunking his head under the spray to rinse the conditioner out.

Once he’s all clean, though, Zayn pounces, pushing the smaller boy against the shower wall.  “You wanna ride his cock, then?  Bet he’d be able to lift you up and down on his dick if he’s as strong as you say he is.”

“Bet you wouldn’t,” says Louis, but there’s no fire behind it – Zayn can see how dilated his pupils are, how flushed his cheeks are – and not just from the heat of the shower.

“Bet I can still do this,” says Zayn, promptly dropping to his knees and taking Louis’s half-hard cock completely into his mouth.  Louis groans above him and drops his head back, hitting the shower wall with a light  _thunk_.  Zayn loves this – he loves getting Harry or Louis hard in his mouth, loves feeling how the skin stays soft while the cock gets firmer, grows bigger as he sloppily tongues at it until he can’t fit all of it in his mouth.  Then he has to actually work for it, sliding his mouth up and down Louis’s shaft and curling his tongue around the underside.

“Fuck, Zayn,  _yeah_ ,” moans Louis.  Zayn gets a hand on his own cock, starts pumping up and down to bring himself to full hardness.  It’s not difficult, with all of the hot noises Louis is making and the taste of Louis overwhelming all of his senses.  “You gonna fuck me?”

Zayn pulls off, letting his free hand take over and stroke Louis’s slick cock at the same pace his mouth had been moving.  “Yeah, Lou, fuck, you know I want to.”

“Wanna ride you,” breathes Louis, gasping when Zayn goes back to using his mouth, sucking hard and going so far down he almost gags.  When Louis starts pleading and pulling at Zayn’s hair, Zayn pulls off again and stands up, grabbing his favorite vanilla coconut body wash. 

“We should finish showering first, though,” smirks Zayn.  Louis just gapes at him, seemingly incapable of forming words or using his limbs.  “Want me to get you clean, babe?”

“You’re a dick,” says Louis finally.  He nods, though, and Zayn motions for him to turn around with a spin of his hands.  Louis fondly rolls his eyes.  “You’re so predictable, Zee.”

“I like what I like,” Zayn tells him.  He squirts a good amount of body wash into his hands and smoothes it over Louis’s shoulders, massaging it into his skin.  Louis shivers and moans, rolling his shoulders and trying to arch his back into Zayn’s touch.  Zayn brings his hands lower, gathering some of the soapy lather from Louis’s shoulders and using it to slide his hands down into the dip of Louis’s spine.  He kneads at the soft skin, drawing more moans from Louis before removing his hands to get some more body wash.

Zayn mouths at the juncture of Louis’s neck and shoulder while his soapy hands drift lower and lower still, eventually coming to rest in the dimples at the bottom of Louis’s back.  He ghosts one finger over the crack of Louis’s bum, causing Louis to tense up then whine and push back, trying to get more contact.

“Zayn,” he sighs, making Zayn grin against his skin.  Zayn slides one soapy hand between Louis’s arse cheeks and rubs over his hole while letting his other hand snake around and start playing with his balls, cupping them in his hand and rolling them with his fingers.  Louis gasps, jerking forward and then back like he’s not sure which one of Zayn’s hands he wants to push into. 

“Get on with it, Malik,” Louis chokes out, groaning when Zayn takes his slippery cock in hand and starts to jack him off.  “Don’t want to come like this, _fuck_.”

“How d’you want to come?” Zayn murmurs, teasing at his hole some more.  He never dips fully inside but always applies the barest amount of pressure, making Louis squeak.

“With you inside me,” says Louis predictably, trying to get one of Zayn’s fingers to actually push into him.

“Just my fingers?” asks Zayn, hand moving faster on Louis’s cock.

“God, no, your cock,  _Jesus_ , are you really gonna make me spell it out for you,” huffs Louis, but he’s losing all of his composure rapidly as Zayn keeps working his hands in focused movements.

Zayn takes his hand off Louis’s cock, causing the smaller boy to whine, but then Zayn turns him around and maneuvers him under the warm spray to rinse him off because Zayn, however much he likes to tease, is starting to get impatient himself.  Zayn pays special attention to his arse, spreading his cheeks apart and playing with his hole to make sure all of the soap is gone.

“You think Liam would carry you to bed?” Zayn murmurs in his ear.

“Mmmm,” Louis hums, rocking forward and rubbing his hard cock against Zayn’s thigh. 

Zayn chuckles at the desperation in Louis’s voice, then reaches around him and shuts the water off.  He grabs two handfuls of Louis’s bum and squeezes appreciatively before bending his knees for leverage and then straightening them, lifting Louis up with him.

Louis yelps and snakes his hands around Zayn’s neck and his legs around his waist, clinging tightly.  His hard cock is trapped in between them and he whimpers, rutting up against Zayn in jerky movements.

“You’re going to drop me,” Louis pants between thrusts.

“Ant and I started going to a Muggle gym over the summer,” Zayn tells him as he navigates his way into the bedroom.  “Don’t tell my parents.”

Louis groans and sucks a bruise into the soft skin of Zayn’s neck, making Zayn hiss.  “You’re so hot,” he pants, sighing gratefully as Zayn drops him onto the giant bed.

Zayn grins back at him, stretching over him to reach under one of the pillows for his wand.  He only needs to just get his fingers around it before he’s non-verbally Summoning a bottle of lube, which flies out of his trunk and into his outstretched hand.

“Show-off,” says Louis, grinning at him.

“You think it’s hot,” retorts Zayn.  He flips open the cap and squeezes a generous amount of slick onto his fingers.

Louis reaches up and grips the back of Zayn’s neck, bringing him down into a bruising kiss.  Their tongues clash together, twining around each other as Zayn licks into Louis’s mouth with a low groan.  Louis’s mouth is hot and wet and tastes like the cinnamon gum he’s so fond of chewing after Quidditch.

Zayn brings one of his wet fingers up and runs it between Louis’s legs, slicking up all around his hole, behind his balls.  He pulls off of Louis’s mouth with a filthy sound and says, “You get a good look at Liam’s hands, Lou?”

Louis whimpers and shakes his head as Zayn strokes his perineum.

“Bet his fingers are huge,” says Zayn. He actually still has no idea what Liam looks like after his apparent “transformation,” but he’s becoming awfully fond of the picture he’s painting for Louis as he slides a single finger inside him.  Louis groans and bears down, spreading his legs wide.  “Fill you up so good.”

“Stop,” pants Louis, fucking down on Zayn’s finger and giving no indication that he wants him to stop.   “I won’t ever be able to – ahh, to look him in the eye again,  _fuck_.”

Zayn grins mischievously and adds another finger to the tight clench of Louis’s hole.  Louis moans and writhes around, throwing his head back and exposing the line of his neck.  His still-wet hair is sticking up around his face in soft spikes and drops of water cling enticingly to his chest and around his nipples.

“He sounds pretty strong,” Zayn continues, ignoring Louis’s pleas.  “Would bang you so hard with his fingers, I bet.”  He speeds up the motions of his hands, driving his fingers into Louis faster and faster, making filthy sounds with how much lube he’s using.

“Inside me,” gasps Louis, clenching his hands in the bedsheets.  “Inside me  _now_.”

“I  _am_  inside you, babes,” taunts Zayn, getting ready to add another finger.  Before he can, though, Louis makes a sharp, displeased noise and surges up to wrap his arms around Zayn, catching Zayn by surprise and flipping them both over.  Louis reaches for the discarded bottle of lube and squeezes more out, quickly smoothing it up and down Zayn’s cock and making Zayn hiss at the cold, but before he can admonish Louis, the smaller boy is lining himself up and sinking down, inch by blissful inch, to envelop Zayn’s cock.

“C-couldn’t wait, could you,” Zayn gasps out, his brain ceasing all higher functioning as his dick is surrounded by tight, tight heat.

“Shut up,” breathes Louis, stopping halfway down and trying to let his body adjust.  He’s not very patient, though, not seeming content until he’s fully seated and his plump arse cheeks are resting on Zayn’s upper thighs.  “Don’t you  _ever_  shut up?”

“You love it,” says Zayn, rolling his hips and shifting himself inside Louis.  Louis whimpers and bends down, their mouths meeting as their lips slide together.  Soon, though, Louis detaches himself, leaning back so he can start to move in earnest.  Zayn knows that Louis loves being on top, loves having at least the illusion that he’s in control.   It works out really well for Zayn, too, who gets to lean back and watch greedily as Louis fucks himself down, making little whimpering noises every time the thick cock inside him rubs him just right.

Both of them have lost their words – for a while the only noise in the room besides their quiet moans and gasps is the sharp sound of Louis’s arse slapping down on Zayn’s hips.  Zayn has a loose grip on Louis’s hips, not enough to move him but enough to guide him.  He rubs his thumbs up and down Louis’s sides reverently as Louis takes him deep inside again and again, rolling his hips filthily. 

Eventually, though, Zayn thinks that Louis looks a bit too sure of himself, so he grips him a bit tighter and says, “C’n you imagine – what Liam would, mmm, what he’d think of you – right now?”

Louis moans loudly, faltering in his rhythm.  Zayn takes advantage of his distraction and plants his feet firmly on the bed for leverage, starting to fuck up into Louis’s pliant body.  Zayn continues, “He’d think you a slut, wouldn’t he, Lou?”

“M’not a slut,” Louis pouts, arching his back to get Zayn deeper.  His thighs are shaking with exertion and Zayn digs his fingers in harder – he’s probably going to leave bruises, which is totally more than okay.

“You’re fucking gagging for it,” Zayn grits out, starting to thrust harder to match the rhythm of Louis riding him.  He thinks he might also get bruises on his hipbones,  _fuck._   “Bouncing on my cock,  _shit_ , thinking about someone else–”

Out of the corner of his eye, Zayn catches a blur of movement and notices that Harry has just let himself in.  Harry takes one look at them and swallows heavily, palming the front of his trousers. 

“Fuck – shit – oh my  _god,”_  Louis whines, starting to lean forward.  Zayn knows Louis is close because his hole has started to clench and spasm just the tiniest bit.  Louis doesn’t seem to have noticed Harry yet.

“Bet his dick is fucking huge,” says Zayn, feeling himself start to get close as well. He smirks at Harry and takes hold of Louis’s desperately hard cock, rubbing his fingers around the tip where precome has been beading up.  Louis squeaks and jolts, hands coming up to brace themselves on his thighs.

“Yeah, oh,  _fuck_ , yeah–” Louis chokes out, digging his nails into his own skin.  “Gonna come soon, Zee–”

“Know you are, babe,” says Zayn, using Louis’s precome as slick to start jerking him off.  “So – fuck – pretty when you come.”

Zayn tears his eyes away from Louis’s full, hard cock to see that Harry has taken his own prick out of his trousers and is lazily starting to stroke himself to hardness while watching the scene before him.  There’s an oddly piercing, intense look in his eyes, and when Zayn meets them with his own, he feels an inexplicable little thrill of fear _zing_ down his spine and into where his body is joined with Louis’s.  He shifts his gaze back at Louis, whose eyes are tightly shut, and wants to push him over the edge.

“Hello, Harry,” Zayn says, as casually as he possibly can given that he’s rapidly approaching his own orgasm. 

Louis’s eyes snap open and he gasps, whipping his head around to find Harry slowly stroking his big cock and watching him with an unreadable expression on his face.  Zayn feels Louis’s body clench around him even more and knows that he’s just about to come.

“Harry, oh – oh my  _god, fuck, Harry_ –” Louis cries out, and then he’s coming, all of his muscles going tense at once, his back arching beautifully as he spurts all over Zayn’s hand and stomach.  His hole goes vice-tight around Zayn’s cock, and Zayn just barely manages to fuck Louis through his orgasm before he’s coming as well, releasing into the delicious warmth of Louis’s body with a deep groan.

Zayn’s head goes pleasantly fuzzy for a few moments, although he does register Louis collapsing on top of him with a little whimper.  When he comes back to himself, he tries to ease himself out of Louis’s fucked-out hole as gently as possible, although Louis still makes an unhappy noise at the action.

“When did you get here, Haz?” Louis finally asks, having regained his ability to speak but not, apparently, his ability to move, as he lays firmly slumped on top of Zayn, face-down on his chest.  Zayn straightens out his legs and lets his feet dangle off the edge of the bed, relaxing his legs after having bent them for so long.

“Got here when Zayn was talking about someone else’s prick,” says Harry, taking his trousers off, and,  _oh_ , that’s _jealousy_ Zayn hears, isn’t it?  Harry’s brows are furrowed just slightly, and there’s something very deliberate and tightly controlled in the way he’s stripping his clothes off, like some sort of calm before a storm, like he’s a bomb about to go off at any moment.  Zayn is suddenly possessed by the ridiculous urge to scramble out from underneath Louis and as get far away as possible from the impending explosion.  Unfortunately, an entirely unsuspecting Louis is still collapsed on top of him, rendering escape impossible, and so Zayn can only watch as Harry stalks toward them, completely nude and completely dangerous.

It’s not often that Harry gets in this sort of mood – out of the three of them, he’s definitely the most submissive – but when he does, Merlin pity whoever ends up being the subject of his attention (or, really, Merlin pity their arse).

Still oblivious, Louis says, “Oh, right, I was just telling Zayn how fit Liam Payne’s gotten.”

Harry quirks a brow and his eyes glint dangerously.  Zayn feels a little thrill of terror run through him.  “Yeah? How’s he look?” asks Harry softly. 

This is an odd question from Harry – even when he’s not about to unleash a bout of sexual fury, he’s always a bit possessive and jealous.  Even Louis picks up on the strangeness, now.  “Um – um? Well, he’s gotten taller…”

As Louis continues to tentatively describe Liam, he sighs happily as Harry gets close enough to them to stroke a gentle finger down his spine.  The fact that Harry is being this gentle is making Zayn well and truly terrified for Louis’s safety. 

“…could probably pick me up…” Louis is continuing, rambling on. 

Zayn sees Harry bring one leg up to half-kneel at the foot of the bed and sucks in a sharp breath when he thinks about what Harry might be planning on doing.

“Zayn and I can both pick you up,” murmurs Harry, thumbing at the dimples at the bottom of Louis’s spine.

Louis gives a little laugh.  “Yeah, but you should see his arms–” He cuts off abruptly with a sudden, powerful intake of air, though, because Harry has lowered his mouth and begun to lick around the rim of Louis’s hole.   _“Ohmygod–”_

Harry brings his big hands up to spread Louis’s arse cheeks apart, licking in deeper and making sloppy sucking sounds as he tongues at the other boy’s entrance.  Zayn can’t quite see everything, but he can feel the way Louis has gone rigid above him, clinging onto Zayn’s sides tightly and trying to muffle his little helpless noises in Zayn’s chest. 

It’s only as involuntary tears of pleasure start leaking from Louis’s eyes and wetting Zayn’s chest that Zayn remembers –

“Harry, that’s  _filthy,”_  he gasps, scandalized, as Harry  _licks Zayn’s come out of Louis._

Harry makes a noncommittal noise of agreement into Louis’s hole, then does something with his tongue that makes Louis wail.  Not knowing what else to do, Zayn makes gentle shushing noises and reaches up with one hand to pet soothingly at Louis’s hair.  It’s dirty, and it’s fucking hot, the way Harry goes at it, holding nothing back – Zayn would be getting hard, under other circumstances, but he’s literally just fucked Louis, so.  Plus, on top of that, he thinks that he might actually be too scared to get hard again, his body too in shock at Harry’s dark mood to even consider directing blood into his dick.

But then Zayn can feel Louis getting hard against him, sobbing as his oversensitive cock fills up again because of how relentlessly Harry’s licking into him, and maybe – yeah, maybe it’s not impossible for Zayn to consider getting hard again.

“Har – ry,  _Harry_ , god–” Louis can barely get the words out he’s so overwhelmed.  Zayn can feel him trying to struggle, trying to squirm away, but Louis is sandwiched between the other two boys, held doubly fast by Harry’s strong arms.

Harry pulls off with a sloppy sucking sound and brings one finger up, circling around Louis’s hole.  He watches, mesmerized, as it sinks right in, wet with come, lube, and spit, and Zayn can’t quite see it happening but he can _hear_ it.  

Zayn can sense that Louis is torn between pleading with Harry to stop and demanding that he continue, sobbing out, “Too much, Harry, st-  _fuck_ , oh fuck–”

“Oh, so we’re thinking about me, now?” asks Harry, voice impossibly low, fucking Louis deep with his long finger.  He brings up another one, spits on it for good measure, and then he’s sliding the second one in alongside the first with a filthy  _squelch_ ing sound.  Harry leans down again, tongues all around the rim, all around where his fingers are stretching Louis out, and Louis positively  _wails_.

“Hold him still, Zayn,” says Harry.  Louis has started shakimg, his thighs trembling as Harry eats him out.  Zayn tries to pet at Louis’s sides, stroke over his bum in what’s intended to be a comforting manner, but it makes Louis moan and thrash even harder, and Zayn ends up having to grip him tightly to stop him from injuring any of them.

Harry does something with his fingers that makes Louis cry out and rut against Zayn, his cock now fully hard again and starting to dribble precome.  It slides against Zayn’s own dick, and  _Merlin_ it’s good, slick and warm, so much so that Zayn’s well on his way to being completely hard.  Of course, he’s not recovering as fast as Louis is, but that might have something to do with the fact that Zayn isn’t getting eaten out, nor is his prostate being relentlessly stimulated by Harry’s long, knowing fingers. 

Louis seems to have lost his ability to speak and is now whimpering and biting at Zayn’s chest to keep quiet.  Zayn can already see a few bruises forming from where Louis has bitten down, and it  _hurts_ , but the pain only amplifies how good all of this is, how  _wild_  it is –

“’s he hard?” Harry says. It takes Zayn several seconds to realize that Harry is speaking to him; he’s up to three fingers now, thrusting them hard and fast.

Zayn reaches down between himself and Louis and takes both of their cocks in hand, groaning at how good it feels.  “Yeah, he is.”

Harry grins at him over Louis’s head, a dark, feral smile that twists at Zayn’s insides.  Louis squeaks as Harry moves his fingers even faster, so fast that they’re almost a blur.

“Of – bloody – well –  _course_ – ’m hard –  _Jesus_  –” he sobs out, making Harry’s grin widen. 

Harry slaps him lightly on the bum happily and says, “Budge up,” to Zayn.  Zayn scoots backward on the bed, taking Louis with him, his hand still around both of their cocks.  Harry pulls his fingers out and wraps that same hand around his own cock, so hard it’s turning a dark red.  He slicks it up as much as he can, but Louis’s arse is so wet that Zayn doesn’t think Harry’s going to need much more lube.

Zayn watches as Harry lines up the head of his cock with Louis’s puffy hole, circling it around his entrance a couple of times before starting to push in.  It’s obscene, frankly, how the rim of Louis’s hole stretches, wider and wider, until finally the thick head pops all the way in.  Harry stays that way, circling his hips a little and making Louis whine.  “Anyone want to talk about Liam Payne’s cock?” he asks conversationally, his voice only a little bit strained. 

Louis’s only response is a sob and a shake of the head as Harry pushes in another inch. 

“You play dirty,” Zayn says to Harry.  Harry laughs and lowers his head to kiss him, leaning his body over Louis’s to join their mouths together.  Harry’s lips are warm and Zayn can taste his own come on them, which  _should_  be disgusting but instead just makes him hotter all over than he already is.  Zayn squeezes his hand a little tighter around himself and Louis, groaning into Harry’s mouth.

Between them, Louis whines and bucks his hips, making both of the other boys hiss.  Harry bites at Zayn’s lower lip and then pulls off, pushing himself the rest of the way inside Louis.  “You want a kiss too, babe?” he asks, rolling his hips and making Louis gasp.

Zayn can tell that Louis really, really doesn’t want to indulge Harry but also really, _really_ wants his attention.  Finally, Louis nods, and Harry grips Louis’s chin and tilts his head to the side, mashing their lips together as he pulls out and thrusts back in.  Zayn’s legs are starting to go a little bit numb from the weight of the two boys on top of him but it’s so,  _so_  worth it – his dick is so, so sensitive, and the sweet friction of Louis’s shaft on his own is driving him closer and closer to the edge.  He also feels – _weird,_ kind of weird, like Louis and Harry are working out their own little power struggle in front of him – he almost feels left out, even though they’re literally having sex right on top of him –

And then Louis is breaking apart from Harry’s mouth and leaning down to sloppily kiss Zayn, their tongues clashing desperately, and Harry’s grinning at both of them breathlessly as he fucks into Louis harder. 

“You’re so – hot together,” he pants out, leaning down to bite at the back of Louis’s neck.  Zayn normally closes his eyes when he kisses, but he doesn’t want to miss a  _second_  of this, of how Harry’s lips close around a soft patch of skin and how he sucks, hard, causing Louis to whimper into Zayn’s mouth. 

Then Harry leans up a bit, which changes the angle and has Louis pulling off of Zayn’s mouth with a sharp intake of air.  Harry laughs breathlessly, wipes some sweat off of his brow, and then really goes at it, taking hold of Louis’s hips with both hands and thrusting fast. 

Louis goes absolutely wild, shaking and crying out loudly every time Harry bottoms out, digging his nails into Zayn’s skin, and then – then he falls silent for a few seconds, and Zayn’s almost  _sure_  Louis is going to tell Harry to stop, tell Harry to pull out and get on his back so that Louis can take control again, but – no,  _fuck_ , he’s coming instead, squeezing his eyes shut and burying his face in Zayn’s neck as his cock spurts weakly between their bodies.  Louis doesn’t make any noise, just shivers and convulses noiselessly until his orgasm’s almost finished, and even then he just chokes out one harsh sob and goes completely limp.

Louis’s hot come slicks the glide of Zayn’s cock against his and makes it feel so much better for Zayn, who starts rutting his hips up to get more friction.  Louis squirms and groans, and Zayn knows he must be  _so_  sensitive – he’s already come twice, and Harry’s still pounding his arse while Zayn frots up against him from below, and it must almost  _hurt_  –

 _Shit,_  Zayn’s gone, cock twitching as he groans and adds to the mess between their stomachs, and  _Godric_ , this is the best Saturday ever, he’s literally done nothing all day except sleep and have fantastic sex.  He hears Harry swearing above them as Zayn pulls Louis in for a desperate, exhausted kiss, feels Harry slow down and grind in deep, knows he’s coming too from the low moan that rumbles from his chest. 

As Harry’s coming down from his orgasm, he makes a displeased noise and pulls Louis’s mouth away from Zayn’s, replacing it with his own.  Louis all but melts into him, shoulders sagging as Harry fucks his mouth with his tongue, and – oh, Zayn’s legs are  _actually_  asleep, brilliant.

“Get off,” he grunts, shoving weakly at the two boys on top of him. 

Harry and Louis break apart.  “Just did,” says Harry with a smirk, but he rolls off of Zayn just the same, taking Louis with him.  They end up spooning, still connected between their legs, and Louis reaches out with both arms for Zayn.  He looks so pitiful and fucked out that Zayn can’t resist giving him a cuddle.

They’re all quiet for a bit, letting their breathing even out, and then Louis says, “There’re some days when it makes absolutely no sense that you were sorted into Slytherin, and some days when I realize how spot on the Sorting Hat really was.”

Harry snorts.  “What, ’cause I’m good in bed?”

“Fuckin’ ruthless,” says Zayn, making Louis giggle.  “I was scared for m’life for a bit, there, and I wasn’t even the one getting rimmed.”

Louis shivers and Harry looks pleased, stroking up and down his arm. 

“You’re a menace, Styles,” Louis says fondly.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” asks Harry, frowning suddenly, and he looks suddenly younger, like the naïve fourteen-year-old Harry that Zayn had first met.  Well, Harry didn’t have his cock up Louis’s arse when they first met, but.  His face is similar, is the point.

Louis shakes his head.  Harry’s frown lessens, but the worry lines between his eyebrows remains.  “You’ll tell me if I do, ever? Won’t you, Lou?”

“Course I will,” says Louis.  “Right now, my arse isn’t, like,  _extremely_ happy with you, but it’s nothing that one of Zayn’s Healing spells can’t fix.”

Zayn groans.  “You know I can teach you how to do it yourself–”

“You tried teaching me, remember?  On the first try I ended up spraying myself in the bum with orange marmalade, which  _certainly_  didn’t make it feel any better–”

“How’re you going to make a proper Healer if you can’t even get a Soothing Spell right?” asks Zayn, drowned out as Harry bursts into laughter.

“I’m sure the spells will come with practice,” says Louis, bopping Zayn on the nose.  “I just don’t much fancy trying it on myself again, thanks.”

“D’you maybe fancy a nap? I’m exhausted,” says Harry.

“Me too,” says Zayn.  “We’re in my bed, I vote nap.”

 _“Seriously?”_  asks Louis.  “I got up  _hours_  earlier than either of you! How are you tired already?”

“Fucking you was exhausting,” Zayn tells him.

“’Specially when you wouldn’t stay still,” adds Harry.

Louis blushes but still tries to look annoyed.  “Fine. But you aren’t sleeping inside me,” he snaps at Harry, who pouts but reaches down to ease himself carefully out of Louis.

Zayn reaches down to pull the covers up over the three of them, and then he’s back where he started the day, really, just with two really great orgasms under his belt and two additional boys in his bed and an intense desire to see what Liam Payne looks like now. After all, it was all that talk about Liam that started this whole thing today. Yeah, Zayn definitely has to see what all the fuss is about, but Liam isn’t going anywhere just yet, and Zayn’s bed is just too comfortable to even consider leaving it for another couple of hours.  He closes his eyes and falls back asleep to the sound of Louis and Harry’s gentle breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. You may have noticed that I identified Greg James as the host of the Breakfast Show. This is intentional, because Grimmy will be showing up as a fairly important character in the story. ;)  
> P.P.S. I'm going off of the fanon concept that Head Boy & Girl get their own common room, own bedrooms, and own separate bathrooms. No idea if it's ever actually been confirmed or not, but Zayn and Perrie have the best digs out of all of them by far.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zayn gets a new Potions partner and the Slytherins host a party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next installment! I throw a fuckton of characters in in this chapter, because I wanted it like the HP universe where there were a lot of names JKR had to work with but not a lot of character development outside of the main characters.  
> Enjoy!

It’s at breakfast on Monday morning that Zayn finally gets his first look at “changed” Liam who, for several days, had been nothing more than a vague concept.  Liam wasn’t at dinner Saturday night, and Zayn didn’t get up in time for breakfast on Sunday, and he skipped dinner Sunday night in favor of getting doing some reading in the library with his new favorite book,  _Careers in Transfiguration: What To Do With Your Uncommon Gift_.  Perrie, who, as Head Girl, shares a common room with him, was nice enough to make up a plate of food for him from the leftovers, which she left in front of the fire. 

“I don’t even understand, it’s only been a week,” says Louis as they walk toward the Great Hall for breakfast.  “How’re you already skipping meals to do work?”

“Hermione ordered a bunch of new books for the library over the summer, and she told me there was a new one that talked about Curse-Breaking, which I’ve been thinking about going into, and I got kinda wrapped up in it,” Zayn says.

“Oh, so we’re on a  _first-name_  basis with Professor Weasley now, are we?” asks Louis. 

Zayn scoffs at him.  “Considering how much time I spend with her, it’d be weird if I wasn’t.”

“Still don’t understand what you guys  _do_  all the time,” says Louis.

“I mean, every professor has a seventh-year apprentice, right?  I’ve just been hers for… an extra year, I guess,” Zayn explains.  “Speaking of that, have you gotten started with Professor Malfoy?”

Louis shakes his head.  “He says we have to wait for some more ingredients to get here by owl before we start looking into creating new potions.  He  _did_  say, though, that we’re going to be brewing some Controlled potions for the Ministry, too, which is  _sick_.”

“That’s awesome!  Can’t believe they’re trusting you with that, though,” jokes Zayn.

“Fuck off,” Louis replies brightly. 

They enter into the Great Hall and see that they’re some of the last people to arrive, which is in no way unusual; Zayn hates getting up and Louis takes inexcusably long showers.  They spot Harry sitting with Ed at the Hufflepuff table, talking lowly with their heads pressed together.

“Shall we sit with them?” asks Zayn. 

Louis doesn’t have to ask who he’s talking about.  “Nah, let’s let them catch up.  I’ve been meaning to talk to Stan, anyway.  Want to sit with us?”

Zayn scans the room, looking over his options.  He sees Danny and Ant waving him over from the Ravenclaw table, and he’s just about to tell Louis that he’s going to sit with them when his eyes pass over the Gryffindor table and he sees a really, really,  _stupidly_  fit boy with a fauxhawk whose face might somewhat resemble someone who Zayn previously knew as Liam Payne.

“Lou, at the Gryffindor table.  Is that…?”

Louis whips his head around (a bit too obviously, for Zayn’s taste) his face breaks into a grin.   _“Oh,_  yes, I almost forgot about that.  Feast your eyes, Zee.”

They both watch Liam stand up from the table and admire the long, lean line of his body in his uniform trousers and Oxford.  When he adjusts his tie, Zayn’s eyes are drawn to his neck and he actually starts salivating with how much he wants to bite down and bruise that skin.   Next to him, Louis makes a sort of pained groaning sound as Liam shrugs the billowing black uniform robe over the entire ensemble and covers up his glorious body. 

“I hate our uniforms,” says Zayn vehemently.

“Bloody shame, they are,” agrees Louis.

There’s a long pause as they silently watch Liam stride out of the Great Hall, his bookbag slung over one shoulder.  He looks so much like a… well, like a  _man_  that Zayn, who doesn’t bottom often, suddenly finds himself wondering what it’d be like to get fucked by him.

He hears Louis clear his throat next to him and realizes he’s been staring at the empty doorway Liam exited through for far longer than is socially acceptable. 

“So, yeah. There’s that,” says Louis, an amused look on his face.  “Want to sit with me and Stan for breakfast, anyway?”

“Think I’ll sit with the Ravenclaws,” says Zayn, suddenly wishing he’d gotten up earlier and had more time in the same room as Liam.  “See you in Care of Magical Creatures?”

Louis scoffs.  “If I end up  _going.”_

“Oh, come on, Lou!  Hagrid loves seeing us – well, he loves seeing Haz, really, but I think he likes you and me as well–”

“I know, I know,” Louis cuts him off, “I  _want_  to like the class, I really do, Hagrid’s great, it’s just – god, it’s so bloody  _boring_.”

“It’s Harry’s favorite class,” Zayn reminds him.

“Fine, fine, I’ll go,” groans Louis.  “Enjoy your stupid breakfast, you kiss-arse.”

“Fuck you too,” says Zayn, and they go their separate ways smiling to themselves.

Zayn sits himself down across from Ant and Danny and next to his housemate Jaymi.  The Riachs, like the Maliks, are another well-respected pureblood family, and Zayn grew up with them as his playmates.  He was ecstatic when he came to Hogwarts in his fourth year and found himself sorted into the same House that both brothers were already in.  Zayn shared a dorm for three years with Ant, Danny, Jaymi, and their friend Matt before, of course, he was given his own room this year as Head Boy.

“Morning, Zayn,” says Jaymi.  He’s absorbed in the _Daily Prophet_ as usual, sipping his tea and flipping through the pages to try and find something worth reading.

“Morning,” says Zayn.   He helps himself to several pieces of toast and begins spreading them with jam.  “How was everybody’s weekend?”

“We went into Muggle London last night,” says Danny with a yawn, gesturing to himself and Ant.  “Matt showed us around and got us into a club.”

“On a  _Sunday?”_ Zayn asks, scandalized.

Ant massages his temples.  “It was a horrible idea from the start, really.  We did go to your common room to invite you, but Perrie said you were in the library, so we figured you didn’t want to come out with us.”

Zayn waves his hand.  “No, it’s fine.  I got a lot done last night anyway.”

“Hey, Zayn, your dad works at St. Mungo’s, right?” asks Jaymi suddenly.

“Yeah, he’s the head of the Department of Magical Incisions,” says Zayn.  Jaymi, a Muggleborn, stares at him blankly.  “They, y’know, open people up if they need fixing.  Doesn’t happen often, because most Healing spells can penetrate the skin, but some need to be performed directly on a certain organ.”

“Ah, like surgery,” murmurs Jaymi.

“Like what?” asks Danny.

Jaymi waves his hand in the air.  “Nevermind that.  Apparently there was a security breach yesterday evening - somebody tried to break into the Medical Records wing.”

“Did they steal anything?” asks Zayn.

“I suppose they were looking for someone’s file,” says Jaymi.  “But a guard found them and they bolted before he could catch them.  Says here there were three of them, all wearing masks.  They checked all the records, but nothing was missing.”

“People are stupid,” says Ant.  “Trying to break into one of the most highly-guarded areas of St. Mungo’s is probably the most difficult thing to do save breaking into Gringott’s.”

“It’s been done,” Zayn points out.  “I suppose they’re going to have to heighten security even more now.”

“It’s already bloody difficult to even get _in_ to St. Mungo’s,” says Danny.  “Ant and I were visiting our cousin there after she had her accident – remember that, yeah? – and we had to provide, like, our wand for identification, plus one other form.  We’re  _wizards_ , we don’t  _need_ identification, do we?”

“How’s she doing, by the way?” asks Jaymi.

“Better, better.  Her sleep schedule’s still reversed, but the fangs have mostly receded and she can see herself in mirrors again,” says Ant. 

Jaymi and Zayn nod and make encouraging, pleased noises.  Then Zayn glances around and notices that most of the other students have started getting up to go to class; he looks at his watch and realizes that he has less than a minute left to finish his breakfast.  He stops talking, then, in favor of hastily stuffing the rest of his toast in his mouth and washing the big lump of bread down with a glass of pumpkin juice, listening to his friends prattle on.

When they’re all finished, they stand up from the table and shoulder their bags.  On Mondays, the first class the seventh-year Ravenclaws have is double Potions with the Gryffindors, and so the four of them set out for the dungeons.  Zayn finds his heart rate steadily increasing as they get closer to the room knowing that Liam is going to be there.  He doesn’t normally go all stupid over a bloke like this; he attributes this partially to embarrassment at having gotten off to Liam twice on Saturday and partially to having done it completely without his knowledge. 

When they get to the classroom, most of the seats are already taken, so the four of them fill in the back.  Precisely on time, Professor Malfoy strolls briskly into the room, his shoes echoing on the floor.

“Welcome to the second week of classes,” says Malfoy, striding to the front of the room.  “I let you pick your partners last week, but today I’ll be assigning you your partner, who you will stay with until the end of term.”

The class titters nervously.  Nobody here hates each other – Gryffindors and Ravenclaws usually get on well – but everybody prefers to be paired up with their friends, honestly.

“I was toying with the idea of pairing up Gryffindors and Ravenclaws who I know for a fact have never interacted, but then I thought, ‘Don’t be a dick, Malfoy, they’ve only just started to like you.’” The class laughs.  “So, I just made it alphabetical.  Allen, Avendi; Axbury, Bates; Bones, Carter…”

Zayn wracks his brain, trying to think of who he might be paired up with. He knows this particular class is heavy on the first half of the alphabet, but even so he’s guessing he’ll be paired up with Melanie MacCormick.  He  _would_  guess Cameron Marnero, but he knows that Cam dropped out of Potions this year because he wants to go into finance and needed more classes in Arithmancy.

“…Hensley, Horan; Krupinski, MacCormick…”

Oh, so not Melanie.  Then who –

“Malik, Payne…”

Zayn gulps, trying not to betray anything on his face, but – seriously?   _Seriously?_ There’s _no on_ e in their class whose last name begins with an N or an O?  He looks over at Liam, sees that Liam is already looking at him.  They smile at each other and Zayn looks away first, clenching a fistful of robes in his sweaty palm.

Malfoy finishes reading the list of names and the students begin to pair up and choose their work stations.  Zayn sees Liam make a beeline for the front of the classroom and smiles; he was going to head up there himself, and it’s good that they have the same academic mindset.

“Alright, Niall?” he hears Jaymi yell.

“Hey, Jaymi!” says Niall.  Zayn’s never really spoken to Niall, but the whole school knows him as the bloke that ate three whole roast chickens in one sitting on a bet last year.  “This is gonna be sick!”

Zayn reaches the front-and-center desk that Liam has staked his claim on.  “Hey, Liam.”

“Hi Zayn!” says Liam cheerfully.  He holds out a hand and Zayn shakes it, bemused.  “How was your summer?”

“I spent most of it in Pakistan,” Zayn tells him.  “So, it was hot, but it was nice to see everyone.”

“Oh, do you have family there?” asks Liam.

“Yeah, on my dad’s side.”

“Today,” begins Professor Malfoy, interrupting any further conversation, “we’re going to be brewing the Draught of Peace.  It’s not an exceptionally difficult potion – my predecessor liked to assign this to fifth years – but unicorn horn only recently became available again for classroom use due to unicorns coming off of the endangered species list.  It’s important to pay very careful attention to the color of your potion, as it’s going to indicate when each step is complete.  You can find it on page 154 of  _Advanced Potion-Making_.  You may begin.”

“I’m going to let you know from the start,” Liam says as they file to the potions cabinet to gather their ingredients, “I’m complete shit at potions.”

Zayn laughs.  “I doubt that, you made it this far.”

“Only because I bust my arse studying,” says Liam, grabbing a moonstone.  “I just hope I don’t drag our group down.”

“As long as we follow the instructions, I think we should be fine,” Zayn assures him.  He himself is pretty good at Potions – not as good as, say, Louis, but he can definitely hold his own.  He takes a piece of unicorn horn and a small vial of Hellebore syrup from the bottom shelf.  “Just the porcupine quills left… oh, they’re on the top shelf, there they are.”

Zayn stands on his tiptoes to reach the top shelf but still finds that he can’t quite reach the porcupine quills.  He blushes and looks at Liam.  “Would you mind grabbing those?”

“Oh, um – sure.”  Liam goes up on his tiptoes and easily grabs the jar of quills.  “How many do we need?”

Zayn stares at him, trying very,  _very_  hard not to think about how much bigger Liam is.  This is going to be an  _extremely_  long quarter if all Zayn can think about in Potions is how much he wants his partner to bend him over the worktable and fuck his brains out.  “What?”

“How many porcupine quills?” Liam repeats.

 _Get your shit together, Malik._ “Oh, um, let’s take two to start.  We have to grind them up, anyway, we’ll just come back if we need more.” 

Liam takes out two and replaces the bottle on the top shelf.  The two of them walk back to their work station, and if Zayn sways his hips a little more than he usually does, nobody has to know.

“Okay, we have to crush up all of the dry ingredients,” says Zayn, moving the mortar and pestle to the front of the work station.  “I can do it or–”

“I’ll do it!” says Liam.  “If you don’t mind. I want to at least feel like I’m contributing  _something.”_

Zayn smiles at him.  “Stop selling yourself short, Liam.”

“No, I’m serious,” says Liam, snapping a porcupine quill into small pieces and then starting to grind it up.  “If you let me do any of the important steps I’ll just muck it all up, so it’s best if I help as much as I can before we actually start.”

Zayn scoffs at him and lights a fire under the cauldron.  “I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”

It turns out that Liam is not, in fact, exaggerating.  The number of times Zayn has to physically grab him to stop him from accidentally ruining the potion is far too high.  What’s worse, though, is that Liam is so endearingly apologetic about it that Zayn can’t help but find him even cuter each time he messes up.

“I’d say that’s orange, wouldn’t you?” asks Liam.  They’re on the final step of simmering, and they only need to add the last of the powdered porcupine quills.

Zayn looks into the cauldron.  “Nah, it’s still too pink.  I’d call that… I’d call that salmon.”

Liam looks amused.  “See, I can  _never_  be as good as potions as you because I’m not a walking box of crayons.”

Zayn laughs.  “Yep, that’s how I got my Potions skills.  I ate a box of crayons as a child and my parents didn’t find me until it was too late.”

“That’s where I went wrong, then,” says Liam with a smile.  “My parents were too diligent, wouldn’t let me include crayons in my healthy balanced diet.”

Zayn laughs again, absolutely mesmerized by the way Liam’s eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, but he’s honestly freaking himself out a bit with how easy it is to get lost staring at Liam’s face.  He’s especially disturbed by how easy it is for Liam to make him laugh.

They both peer into the cauldron again.  “Now  _that’s_ orange,” says Zayn.

Liam stares at it, his eyebrows furrowing and his mouth pulling into a frown.  “It looks the same as it did a minute ago.”

“We’re going to have to work on that,” says Zayn, sprinkling in the rest of the powder.  “Okay, now we have to wait for it to turn white.”

“Now  _that_  I can spot,” says Liam.  “I hope.”

Professor Malfoy walks by their station.  “Good work, lads, good work.  I’m already seeing a lot of improvement over last year, Payne.”

Liam smiles shyly at Zayn as Malfoy walks away.  He’s just opening his mouth to say something when they hear Jaymi scream,  _“Niall!”_  from the work station two rows behind them. 

“Whassat?” asks Niall.  “It said add the rest when it turns orange!”

“That’s not  _orange,”_  wails Jaymi.  “That’s  _salm-_ ”

_Boom!_

The entire class jumps in their seats and Zayn, embarrassingly, grabs hold of Liam’s arm on reflex.  They turn cautiously around to find a smoking cauldron and a pair of soot-covered boys, Jaymi hitting Niall in the shoulder to try and put out the fire that’s started on his robes.

“This is an excellent example of what happens when you don’t pay close enough attention to the color of your potion,” says Malfoy calmly, sweeping over and smothering the fire on Niall’s robes with an empty glass jar.  “Fortunately for the pair of you, you’ve done almost everything else right, so I won’t be deducting too many points.”  He turns around and walks back up toward the front of the classroom in a swirl of black robes.

Liam looks at Zayn.  “I’m glad you’re my partner, Zayn.”

Zayn quickly removes his hand from Liam’s arm and tries to restore his quiff, which has gone limp from the heat in the room.  “You’re not so bad yourself, Liam.”

Liam smiles, then looks into the cauldron.  “Is that white?”

Zayn looks inside; it is indeed white.  “Nailed it!”

“At least I can do something right,” says Liam.  “Now we have to stir it, I think?”

“Seven times clockwise and seven times counter-clockwise,” Zayn tells him.  “You want to do it?”

“I can try,” says Liam, looking uneasy.  “Promise you’ll stop me before I mess up?”

“I can try,” Zayn parrots back at him.  Liam smiles and then begins to stir, a look of adorably intense concentration on his face as he counts the number of stirs under his breath.  He does everything exactly right, and Zayn beams at him as the potion turns a brilliant turquoise blue.  When Liam takes the stirrer out, the potion begins emitting a silvery vapor, which is exactly what’s supposed to happen.  It should  _ideally_  be emitting more vapor, but Zayn’s not going to be picky, not when Liam is grinning like Christmas has come early.

“It worked!” Liam exclaims, looking around like he expects other students to notice and start congratulating him.  “Zayn, it worked!”

Professor Malfoy strolls over to their cauldron and peers inside.  “Excellent, excellent work.  There’re still a few other pairs finishing up, but so far you’re the only ones to have made a fully functional Draught of Peace.”

Liam looks like – a bit like an overexcited puppy, really, and  _Merlin_  that shouldn’t be endearing but it  _totally_  is.

“I’m going to let today’s class be a lesson in  _not_  what to do, for most of you,” says Malfoy, addressing the class at large.  “Who wants to volunteer something they learned?  No shame in admitting you fucked – excuse me, you messed up.”

Zayn can see why Louis and Professor Malfoy get on so well.  Niall raises his hand.

“Yes, Horan?”

“I need to, like, memorize a color wheel,” says Niall, his voice still hoarse from smoke.

“Might be beneficial,” admits Malfoy, smirking.  “Anyone else?  Yes, Ms. Bates?”

“When they say powdered moonstone, they mean, like,  _really_  finely crushed,” says Emilia Bates.  Her cauldron keeps spitting out purple sparks.  “Not just mostly crushed.”

“Indeed, yes, when an ingredient’s listed as ‘powdered,’ you’re talking something so fine you could snort it,” says Malfoy.  He immediately claps a hand over his mouth and, yeah, Zayn can  _definitely_  see why Louis gets along with him.  Liam’s eyes are practically bulging out of his head.  “Well, would you look at the time?  I think it’s time for your next class.  Great work today, everybody.  Look sharp, now.”

The students get up and start pushing in their chairs, still tittering at Malfoy’s last statement.  Zayn puts his book back into his bag and then heaves it over his shoulder.

“Hey, Zayn?” asks Liam.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t even know why I’m asking this, and I could completely understand if you don’t have the time, or – or the interest for it, but d’you think you would maybe, um, be willing to help me out in Potions a little bit?  Like, tutor me?”

Zayn’s mouth goes dry.   _Act cool, act cool._ “I mean, um – have you met my mate Louis?”   _You’re an idiot, Malik, why would you bring up Louis, for Merlin’s sake–_

Liam looks confused.  “Slytherin’s captain, yeah?”

“Um, yeah, he’s actually  _much_  better at Potions than anybody else in our grade, so if you’re really looking to improve, then–” Zayn stammers out.

“If it’s all the same,” Liam interrupts him, smiling shyly, “I think I’d like you as a teacher better.”

xxx

“And that’s how it happened,” says Zayn.  He’s walking with Louis, Harry, and the rest of the seventh-year Ravenclaws and Slytherins out to Hagrid’s hut for Care of Magical Creatures.  “I guess I’m tutoring him now.”

Louis slaps him on the bum.  “You’re a minx, Zayn Malik.”

“I feel like he’s setting you up for a shitty romance novel,” says Harry contemplatively.  “You know, one of those forbidden-love, teacher-student ones.”

“Merlin’s left bollock, it’s only tutoring!” cries Zayn, exasperated.  Louis and Harry will sexualize  _anything_.

“Yeah, with the guy you bloody got off to on Saturday,” says Harry sullenly.  Zayn doesn’t think Harry has quite gotten over Louis getting off to someone else, but he’s going to keep that bit of opinion to himself, for now.

“Is the air thick with sexual tension and intrigue?” asks Louis in a dramatic voice.  “Are you imaging his huge, turgid manhood penetrating your tight–”

“I hate you,” says Zayn vehemently. “I hate you both  _so much.”_

xxx

The second week of classes passes by quickly, mostly because Zayn has nothing to look forward to except the weekend.  He and Liam agree to start meeting for tutoring in the third week, and the rest of their Potions classes the second week are all been lectures, which don’t allow for much conversation between them.  Instead, they frantically scribble down notes as Professor Malfoy waxes poetic on the extraordinary properties of Acromantula venom and laments how difficult it is to find.

Even though they don’t get to talk much, Liam still manages to inadvertently stress Zayn out.  Liam likes to stretch out in his seat when Malfoy lectures, probably because his legs are so long, but he keeps pressing his leg against Zayn’s constantly without seeming bothered about it.  It drives Zayn _mad,_ not sure if he’s meant to move away or not, but he doesn’t, and he spends most of Wednesday’s class period sweating and failing to pay attention to what Malfoy’s saying.

On Friday, Zayn doesn’t see Liam at all, because none of their classes are with the Gryffindors; in fact, all of Zayn’s classes on Friday are the less popular ones that fewer and fewer students have taken as they’ve progressed in school, so the classes are simply filled by whichever seventh years sign up for them.  He has Ancient Runes first, then Divination, and then double Arithmancy after lunch.

“I still don’t understand why you continue to take Divination and Runes,” says Louis on Friday afternoon.  Zayn, Louis, and Harry are lounging around in Zayn’s common room, unwinding from the stress of the school week. 

“Well, I’m still not sure  _exactly_  what I want to go into, so I figured it was better to keep my options open,” Zayn explains.

“You’re lucky you have more than one thing you’re good at,” grumbles Harry, his head in Louis’s lap.

“Shut it, Haz, you know you’re good at a lot of things,” says Zayn.

“What, dueling and taking care of animals?  How am I s’posed to combine those into a career?”  
“Um… you could work for the Ministry?” suggests Louis, stroking his hair.  “Like, Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures?  Bust into people’s homes, make sure they’re not abusing their pets, and duel them to the death if they are, that sort of thing.”

“My dad had a pet python when he was growing up,” says Zayn.  “And he said that he got really close with the Ministry official who had to make sure he was taking care of it properly.”

“I’m afraid of snakes,” Harry pouts.  Zayn snorts.

“And you’re in Slytherin,” sighs Louis, tugging on his hair a little.  “Oh, Hazza.”

Harry nuzzles his head into Louis’s hand and wiggles his feet around in Zayn’s lap.  Unable to resist, Zayn starts to lightly tickle the soles of his feet.  Harry’s just starting to squeak in laughter when the door to the common room opens and Perrie comes gallivanting in with three of her friends.  They immediately stop talking in favor of staring at the three boys on the couch, who in turn stop moving and stare back at them.

“Afternoon,” says Perrie, sounding all too pleased.  “Hope we’re not interrupting anything.”

(In fact, she sounds just the opposite, like she hopes they  _have_  interrupted them.  At the start of the year, Zayn had had to awkwardly tell Perrie that Louis and Harry might be sleeping over quite a bit, and she had looked a little  _too_  excited at this.  “It’s no trouble at all,” she had said breezily, fanning herself.  “And if you guys, y’know, ever need somebody to film you–”  _“Perrie!”_  Zayn had hissed, scandalized.  “I’m just saying,” she had shrugged.  “Can’t blame a girl for liking the idea of you three together.”)

So now, here she is, looking gleeful at the prospect of catching the three of them in the act.  Zayn feels his face flame, even though the three of them weren’t really  _doing_  anything.

“Nope, not at all,” he says, stretching his hands over his head to try and project an air of nonchalance.

“Alright, Jesy?” says Louis, still playing with Harry’s hair.

“Hey, guys,” says Jesy.  She’s in Slytherin, too, a Beater.  Zayn ran into her multiple times last year trying to sneak out of Louis and Harry’s dorm early in the morning.  “You coming to the party tonight?”

Louis scoffs. “Slytherin’s hosting, of  _course_  we’re coming.”

“I invited Niall, Jade,” says Harry, looking up knowingly.

Jade, who’s in Zayn’s own House, blushes prettily.  “Don’t see why you’d feel the need to tell me that.”

“Oh, please,” Harry scoffs, shifting to get more comfortable on his back, “I see the way you look at him in Choir.  I stand right next to him, and I used to think it was  _me_  you were looking at that way, but then it all made more sense when I realized it was him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” mutters Jade, looking at the ground.

Harry, who seems determined to embarrass everyone he can, then says, “Oh, and then Niall said he’d invite  _Liam,_ Zayn.  Apparently they’re pretty good mates.”

Zayn can feel the girls look at him with interest.  “Cool. Liam’s cool,” he says, going for casual and mostly failing.

“You’re being a dick, H,” says Louis. 

Zayn feels Harry’s entire body freeze, and the entire room goes quiet, and then Louis continues, “I _love_  it.”

Zayn swears that Harry fucking  _purrs_.

“Is this some kind of foreplay for Slytherins?” asks Leigh-Anne.  She’s Gryffindor’s best Chaser, and Zayn knows she and Louis have a love-hate relationship that extends past the pitch.  “Because in Gryffindor, we’re into nice,  _normal–”_

“I’ve seen your sex toy collection,” points out Jesy.  “If you think anything about it could be described as  _normal–”_

“Jesy!” snaps Leigh-Anne. 

The girls giggle and Louis hoots with laughter.  Jesy and Leigh’s argument continues as the four girls ascend the staircase to Perrie’s room, and then the common room is quiet again. 

Now that Zayn knows Liam is coming to the party, he’s going to put in  _exactly_  as much effort as he would have before.  This changes nothing.

Except… okay, he already showered once today, but his hair is looking a little greasy.

“I’m going to go shower,” he announces, standing up and dislodging Harry’s feet from his lap. 

“We’ll come with you,” says Louis, getting ready to stand up.

“No, guys,” says Zayn.  “I need, like, an  _actual_  shower.  Where I get clean instead of getting even dirtier.”

“Fine,” Louis pouts.  “We’ll just start going at it right here, then.”  He’s probably thinking that Zayn will get embarrassed and usher them into his shower just to save face in case the girls show back up.

He’s dead wrong.  Nothing gets in the way of Zayn and his personal appearance.  “Suit yourself,” says Zayn, starting to climb up his own set of stairs.  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you if Perrie shows up with a camera, though.” 

xxx

Six hours later, the party in the Slytherin common room is in full swing.  The lighting is minimal, just a few candles and the moonlight shining through the lake casting a blue-green glow around the entire room, and people are taking advantage of the low lighting and getting up close and personal.  Slytherin parties always turn out this way; everyone’s always a bit more hungover and a bit more regretful the day after a Slytherin party than parties any other House throws.  It could be due to the lighting, but right now Zayn would probably put his money on the aggressively spiked punch that everyone present is downing by the goblet.  It’s in a self-regenerating punch bowl that Louis bought from Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes which Zayn is _pretty_ sure increases the alcohol content each time it regenerates the punch.  Soon, they’ll all be drinking straight Firewhiskey. 

There  _have_ been better Slytherin parties, though.  Ones that  _haven’t_  involved Liam Payne.  It’s not that Liam is the problem, exactly, it’s just that Louis latched onto the other boy the second he showed up and has evolved from casually leaning against the wall next to Liam to almost straight-up humping his leg to the beat of the music. 

On the other side of the common room, Zayn and Harry are standing by the punch bowl and having an unspoken contest to see who can be more miserable.  It’s a close call.

“Lou’s probably baiting me,” says Zayn eventually, nudging his shoulder into Harry’s. “You know, trying to play matchmaker.”

Harry grunts and tosses back the rest of his punch.  “Funny way of doing it.” 

“Liam’s probably not even into blokes,” Zayn adds for Harry’s benefit.

Harry doesn’t respond and instead ladles more punch into his goblet, to the point that some of it spills over back into the punch bowl.  Purely in the interest of making sure Harry doesn’t get too drunk and for reasons having _nothing_ to do with the fact that Zayn wants more alcohol, Zayn grabs Harry’s goblet and pours half of it into his own. 

“Lads,” says Stan, coming up to both of them and slapping them on the back.  “Look sharp, now.  Thought you were statues at first.”

“What’s in the punch, Stan? You made it, right?” asks Zayn.  Harry ignores Stan and continues to glare daggers at Louis and Liam. 

“Yeah, yeah, El and I made it, it’s… well, there’s a whole bottle of Firewhiskey in there, plus some kind of drink mix that Madam Rosmerta swore was the best she’d ever used.  She sold it to us in a little plastic baggie.”

That’s comforting.

“Wait,” says Harry, finally tuning into the conversation, “so it’s literally just alcohol and powdered drink mix?”

Stan thinks for a minute.  “Uh, I guess it is, now that you mention it.  I think we were probably supposed to add water…”

At this, all three of them look over to where Louis is now hanging off Liam – not in a sexy way, but in an I-can’t-stand-up-on-my-own kind of way.

“Time to go,” says Harry quickly.

He and Zayn start threading their way through the thick crowd of people to reach Louis and Liam.  An extremely drunk Eleanor intercepts them halfway there, and they’re busy trying to simultaneously disentangle themselves and make sure she’s not dying when the song that’s currently playing (The Hungarian Horndogs’ new single “You Set Me on Fire”) switches over to something far more colorful and manufactured. 

When Zayn hears the first few lines of vocals, he groans. 

Harry makes a face.  “What  _is_  this?”

“It’s that new band!” says Eleanor brightly. 

“I’d hardly call them a  _band,”_  says Zayn.

“Oh, that new wizarding boy band?” asks Harry. 

“I’m thinking of propositioning them for an orgy,” says Eleanor loudly, swaying on the spot.  “D’you think they’d go for it?”

“All five of them?” asks Zayn.  “At once?  How old are they, anyway?”

“They’re not even that good,” says Harry, listening to the music.

“I mean, I  _think_  they’re at least seventeen,” says Eleanor.  She extracts a flask from somewhere inside her shirt, uncaps it, and takes a large swig.  “And that’s all that matters, innit?”

“Wouldn’t be enough of you to go around,” says Zayn, and  _whoa_ , maybe he’s drunker than he thought.

He’s just about to start stammering out an apology when Eleanor shrugs and says, “They can keep each other entertained, then, I’m not picky.  I’m going to go get some more punch.”  She turns around, immediately trips, and falls onto one of the sofas.  “Alcohol!” she announces to Ant, on whose lap she is now sprawled.

“Watch out for her,” Harry tells him, and then he’s dragging Zayn away over to where Liam is now trying to support Louis with one hand and wrestle his drink away from him with the other.

“Give me my drink back, Li-Li!” Louis is shouting. “I need to drink! Turn this pop shit off and put on something I can _dance_ to!”

Zayn’s about to tell Louis he should probably slow down on the alcohol, but he should probably be giving _himself_ the same advice because the next second he stumbles over nothing and falls right into Louis’s arms.

“Silly Zayn,” says Louis happily, unlatching himself from Liam to give Zayn a full hug.  “Zayn, Zaynie, doesn’t know anything about anything.”

“I know a thing or two about some things,” Zayn slurs back indignantly as Harry and Liam look on with identical battles of amusement and concern playing out on their faces.

The offending boy-band anthem is suddenly replaced by a heavy, pounding beat.  It’s slowed down considerably, and there are several whoops from the dance floor as the people who had previously been kind of just awkwardly jumping around start pairing off and moving against each other.

“Oooh, I love this one!” squeals Louis.  He peers around Zayn’s shoulder and his face breaks into a grin when he sees Harry.  “Harry, Hazza babe, come dance with me!”

Harry smiles at Louis as Zayn straightens up and passes the smaller boy off to him carefully.  “How about we get you some water first, love?”

Louis pouts up at him.  “I don’t want to miss the bass drop.”  
“We won’t,” Harry tells him.  He looks at Liam and Zayn.  “D’you know if there’s any water, like, anywhere?”  His speech is even slower than usual, muddied with alcohol (though not as much as Louis’s or Zayn’s).

Zayn grumbles  _“Aguamenti”_ under his breath like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, but even in his mind-altered state he knows that most people here are far too drunk to even _attempt_ magic.  In fact, he isn’t even sure where his wand is – oh, right, he left it back in his room.  Probably a good thing, too; the last time he’d done magic while drunk, Zayn had given Harry a pair of kitten ears that had taken Madam Pomfrey two weeks to safely remove.

“It’s down the table from the punch,” says Liam.  What is?  Oh, right, the water.  “It’s what I’ve been drinking most of the night.”

“Liam!” shouts Zayn, scandalized, as Harry shuffles off with Louis clutched to his side.  “You need to be drunker!”

Liam laughs.  “I think you’re drunk enough for the both of us, Zayn.”

“At least take one shot with me?” Zayn pouts.

 _“One,”_  Liam says firmly.  “You have to promise we’ll stop at one.”

Zayn promises no such thing, just smiles at him and turns around to walk to the punch table, hoping Liam will follow him.  A surreptitious glance over his shoulder tells them that Liam is indeed following him with a bemused smile on his face.   _You don’t even know if he likes you that way,_  a small voice in his head reminds him. Zayn chooses to ignore it. 

On their way over, they pass Harry and Louis now making their way onto the dance floor, and Louis makes grabby hands at Zayn, trying to pull him in.  Zayn shakes him off drunkenly, mouthing “not now,” and then glancing nervously back at Liam, who looks both intrigued and confused.  Louis grins in what Zayn  _thinks_  is understanding and then proceeds to pull Harry in for a heated kiss instead.

The punch table is significantly depleted, but Zayn can see the aforementioned water pitcher sitting on one side next to a couple bottles of wine and a bottle of vodka.  _That’s_ the stuff. 

“Are there any goblets left?” asks Liam. 

“Nope!” says Zayn cheerfully.  “Guess we’ll have to pour it in each other’s mouths.”

“Jesus,” says Liam under his breath.  Zayn tilts his head back, exposing the line of his throat, and opens his mouth, licking at his lips to wet them.  He knows how good he looks and can’t help but quirk his parted lips into a small smile as Liam fumbles to get the bottle of vodka open. 

“Just a bit,” mutters Liam, tipping the bottle and pouring a small amount of the alcohol into Zayn’s open mouth.

Zayn fights back a shudder at the bitter, biting taste of the vodka and instead slowly closes his mouth and swallows, looking Liam dead in the eye as he licks his lips.  Liam’s cheeks go pink and he quickly hands the bottle to Zayn, tilting his own head back but not opening his mouth.

“Open up, Liam,” murmurs Zayn.  Liam’s eyes dart to his, then he looks away, swallowing audibly.  Zayn watches his throat bob, mesmerized, and then Liam parts his lips.  Zayn pours what he  _estimates_  is a shot’s worth of alcohol into Liam’s open mouth, and then Liam brings his arms up to the bottle, pushing it away as he gulps and shudders.

“Sorry, sorry,” says Zayn.  “I don’t really – I’m a little drunk.”

Liam shakes his shoulders out a little and then smiles.  “You don’t say.  And now you’re going to get  _me_ drunk.”

Zayn grins brightly at him, setting the bottle back down on the table.  The music is almost all bass now, sending his heart thudding around in his sternum as he watches his fellow students grind filthily against each other, uninhibited.  From here Zayn can see Harry plastered to Louis’s back, their hips moving together slowly, and Louis has one hand looped round the back of Harry’s head and Harry is kissing (more like licking) his way up the side of Louis’s neck.

Liam must notice Zayn watching them.  “They’re quite striking together.”  Zayn nods.  Liam takes a deep breath and continues, “Are you, um, - _with_ them?  Like–”

Zayn giggles loudly and Liam cuts off, surprised. 

“Kind of?” It comes out as a question, which Zayn didn’t intend.

“What do you – what does ‘kind of’ mean?” asks Liam carefully.

Zayn shrugs, snagging someone’s half-filled goblet off of the table behind him and downing it in one gulp.  “We hook up sometimes,” he says after he’s swallowed, and  _shit why would you say that this is not a conversation we’re meant to be having Zayn what are you doing Liam’s going to freak –_

“Really?  That’s awesome!” says Liam enthusiastically, and Zayn’s so surprised at his response that he drops the goblet onto the floor, where it cracks into several pieces.  Before he can do so much as pick it up, a very drunk Tom Parker is stumbling toward them with his wand out.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry, I got you, Zayn,” says Tom.  Tom is in Slytherin, and he’s the main reason that Louis has a breakdown every few months wondering how the Sorting Hat could be so cruel as to put a Muggleborn in Slytherin.  He’s a pureblood, like Zayn, and seems to think they share some sort of brotherhood because of it.  Tom’s never been directly mean to _Zayn,_ no, but that doesn’t stop Zayn from hating his guts. 

“We all make mistakes sometimes, even us purebloods,” says Tom loudly.  Next to Zayn, Liam stands up a bit straighter, and Zayn remembers that Liam’s parents are both Muggles.  He mentally adds this new offense to the long list of  _Reasons Why Tom Parker is an Arsehole_  (Zayn’s considering publishing it in a three-volume set after graduation).  “Nothing a little magic can’t fix,” continues Tom, and then,  _“Reparo!”_

It doesn’t  _sound_  wrong, but Tom must be pretty fucking pissed, because instead of mending itself the goblet melts into a puddle on the floor and then begins emitting huge red balls of light.  One of them hits Tom right in the face, knocking him backward onto the floor, and another one soars over the crowd on the dance floor and explodes into a brilliant shower of sparks.  A cheer goes up from the dancing mass of people at the impromptu fireworks display.

“Want to go somewhere quieter?” Liam shouts at Zayn, who nods quickly.  Zayn grabs a bottle of Ab’s Hard and leads the way to the seventh-year boys’ dormitories. 

At the foot of the stairs, they pass a group of students chanting “Chug! Chug! Chug!” gathered around Niall Horan, who appears to be chugging an entire bottle of wine at once. 

Their chants follow Zayn and Liam up the stairs, fading as they continue to climb and finally enter into the dormitory.  Louis and Harry won’t mind if he and Liam talk on their bed, probably.  (Technically it’s Harry’s bed, but Louis sleeps there every night too.)  Zayn makes himself comfortable by the pillows, and Liam sits a respectable distance away, hands on his knees.  This is the first time they’ve ever actually been alone together, which – well, Zayn will just think of it as practicing for tutoring, except… on a bed, instead of in the library.  Right.

“So,” says Zayn, screwing the cap off of his Butterbeer and taking a long draw, “what did you mean it’s awesome that we hook up?”

“Well, wait,” says Liam, fighting down a blush, “I’m curious, what do you guys… um, do?”

“Everything.”  It comes out a bit more charged than he expected, and the air changes in the room, like – like there’s not enough of it, suddenly.  Zayn hurries to continue, “I mean, I think we kind of – we’re young, right, and now’s the time to… experiment, I guess.”

“You just – I – Jesus,” Liam stammers.  Zayn isn’t sure if this is a good or a bad thing.

“You aren’t – you don’t think I’m–” says Zayn, cutting Liam off and doing an equally terrible job of communicating.  He can't think of a good way to finish his sentence, so he takes a drink instead.

Liam blushes and plays with the hem of his t-shirt.  “Oh, um… I dunno, it just seems like… you have yourself all figured out, like, you’re comfortable with yourself.”

Zayn’s too drunk to properly comprehend this, so he says, “Are you… not?”

Liam shrugs, loose from the alcohol.  “I mean, everything’s fine, it just… I feel like I’m stuck in a mold?”

This is probably a conversation they should be having while sober.  To compensate, Zayn takes a large gulp of Butterbeer.

“Like, we’ve been here for so long that everybody has these, like… set  _ideas_  of what I’m like, and what you’re like, what everyone’s like, you know?” Liam says, furrowing his brow and thinking hard.  “Like, if… if Louis grabbed you and kissed you downstairs, nobody would look twice, but if  _I_ kissed y- um, kissed a bloke, everybody would be like, ‘what’s he even doing, he’s straight.’”

Zayn gapes at him.  “Aren’t you, though?  Straight?”

“Well I don’t exactly know, do I?” Liam shouts, throwing his hands up, and Zayn is  _entirely_  unprepared to deal with a sexuality crisis in his current state– “I haven’t even kissed a boy, how’m I supposed to know if I like them or not?  How’ve you already got it all figured out, Zayn?”

Stunned, Zayn hands Liam the bottle of Butterbeer, which Liam finishes hastily.  Zayn licks his lips and looks at the other boy; he doesn’t want to move too fast or take advantage of him, definitely not, but  _Merlin_ , Liam’s never done  _anything_  with a guy, Zayn would be his  _first_ –

“Do you want to see?” Zayn slurs, feeling doubly drunk with the headrush he just experienced.

“See what?” asks Liam, slightly calmer now that he’s finished the Butterbeer.

“What it’s like with a guy?”  Without waiting for an answer, Zayn crawls over to where Liam is sitting and swings one of his legs over Liam’s lap, straddling him.  Liam squeaks but makes no effort to move away and instead stares up at him, awed.

“Z-Zayn,” he stammers out, automatically bringing one arm around Zayn’s back to help him balance.  “A-are you – you don’t have to –”

Fuck, Zayn’s having a really difficult time reconciling how adorable Liam is with how much he wants to sexually destroy him.  “D’you want to see, Liam?” he asks again slowly.  Liam’s eyes are glued to his lips.  “For, um – just so you know?”

“Yeah,” breathes Liam, still firmly fixated on Zayn’s mouth.  “Yeah, that might be a good idea.”

Zayn grins at him, hopes it’s not too predatory, and then leans in, wasting no time and pressing his lips against Liam’s.  Liam makes a soft noise in his throat, and then Zayn brings his hands up to grip at Liam’s short hair and the other boy gasps into his mouth.  Their lips slide together, wet and sweet from the Butterbeer, and Zayn honestly can’t help himself when he licks at the seam of Liam’s mouth, chasing the addictive taste of his lips. 

Liam groans and pulls him in tighter, his other arm coming up to grip the back of Zayn’s neck and hold him close.  Liam is so responsive, so  _honest_  in his pleasure, that Zayn can feel himself starting to get hard – as drunk as he is, he feels like he has almost no control over what his body is doing at this point.  Fuck, this is even  _better_  than he was anticipating.

He feels Liam’s tongue dart out of his mouth to meet his, and before Zayn even knows what he’s doing he’s licking wetly into Liam’s mouth and sloppily massaging Liam’s tongue with his own.  Liam makes that same quiet, broken noise, digging his nails into Zayn’s skin.  Zayn can’t stop thinking about how Liam’s never  _done_  this before, Zayn is the  _first_  guy he’s kissed, and Zayn feels so hungry, like he wants to do  _everything_  with him.

As amazing as this feels, though, Zayn doesn’t want to freak Liam out, though, so he pulls back with a monumental amount of effort as Liam whines softly and chases after his lips.  “Liam,” he breathes, trying and  _mostly_  succeeding not to rut against the boy underneath him, “Liam, if you don’t want – we should–”

“Oh my god,” says Liam, relaxing his grip on Zayn’s body only a fraction and meeting his eyes desperately as they keep moving against each other, “oh my god,  _Zayn,_ that was – that was–”

“I know,” says Zayn, who feels exactly like Liam looks.  He – Merlin, he can’t help it, he’s too drunk, he needs to get some friction or else he’ll  _die_ , and he drops his head to bury it in Liam’s shoulder as he thrusts against him.  Everything feels like it’s happening really fast, like literally no time has passed between talking to Liam in the common room and grinding into him on his lap.

“Zayn,” gasps Liam, “we shouldn’t – you’ve had too much to drink–”

Zayn whines, the restraint from only a few seconds ago completely abandoned; he knows Liam is right, but the friction of their jeans together feels  _so_  good on his cock.  He noses underneath the collar of Liam’s shirt and sucks a bruise into his shoulder, making Liam gasp and jerk under him.  “Zayn –  _ah_ , I don’t, mmm – I don’t want either of us to regret this.”

That makes Zayn pause.  He licks at Liam’s skin contemplatively and then remembers, through the alcohol-muddied fog clouding up his brain, that he has to see and work with Liam at least three times a week for the entire term and that he wants, and – like, Liam feels  _special_ , and Zayn really doesn’t want to fuck this up before it’s even started. 

“Liam,” he whimpers, giving Liam’s skin one last nuzzle and then pulling away.  Liam shudders again, and Zayn realizes that if he’s this responsive just to kissing, he can’t even _imagine_ what Liam would be like if someone had their hand or mouth on his cock, and how is Zayn expected  _not_  to get hard thinking about that?

“C’mon,” says Liam, his voice deep and strained.  “Why don’t I walk you back to your tower?”

Zayn frowns.  “Don’t wanna.”

Liam laughs.  “I don’t want you to hate me come tomorrow.”

“I hate you  _now,”_  Zayn pouts, and then they both laugh because they know that’s absolutely not true.  Liam stands up with Zayn still wrapped around him and then very carefully coaxes Zayn onto the floor so that his own legs are supporting him.  Well, mostly supporting him – as he stumbles forward with Liam for added support, Zayn finds it difficult to walk, due in part to the alcohol coursing through his bloodstream and in part to his painfully stiff cock straining at his trousers.

They’ve made it halfway down the long staircase when they’re interrupted by a pair of boys heading up the stairs to bed who turn out to be Louis and Harry.

“Well,  _hello,”_  Louis drawls, looking back and forth between Liam and Zayn.  “Is my bed safe to sleep on?  Didn’t get it too messy, did you?”

“Shut  _up,”_ Zayn hisses.

“I was just trying to get Zayn back to his dormitory,” says Liam, ignoring Louis.  “He’s had –  _hic!_  – he's had a bit too much to drink.”

“We all have,” Harry says.  “He can kip on Lou’s bed, if you want, we usually, um – share.”

“Right,” says Liam quickly.  “Yeah, yeah, that should be fine.  You – can you just, like, make sure he doesn’t throw up or whatever?”

“I’m not  _that_  drunk,” says Zayn petulantly.

“We’ll take care of him,” says Harry.  “Lou’s sobered up a bit, so he shouldn’t be as much trouble–”

“Excuse you!” Louis interrupts him, poking him in the chest, “I’ll have you know–”

“I think that’s my cue to say good night,” says Liam.  “Zayn, I’ll see you t- I’ll see you on Mo- um, I’ll see you whenever.”  Zayn giggles at him; he’s really quite adorable when he’s flustered.  “Louis, good night; Harry, good to see you again.”

“Good night,” they all chorus.  Liam makes his way down the stairs at a respectable pace, leaning heavily on the handrail. 

Once he’s out of sight, Zayn buries his face in his hands and groans, pained.  “He’s so  _nice.”_

There’s no response, at first, and Zayn can’t see through his hands but he knows Louis and Harry are probably looking at him like he’s a freak.  “That’s generally considered a good thing,” says Harry eventually.

“Not when you’re  _hard,”_  Zayn says into his hands. He peeks through them to find identical glints in Louis and Harry’s eyes.

“I pride myself on being a lot of things,” slurs Louis, trying to step forward smoothly but instead kind of stumbling right into Zayn’s space, “but ‘nice’ is not one of them.  It’s your lucky night, Malik.”

xxx

When Zayn wakes up on his back the next morning, it’s to a splitting headache, a severely upset stomach, and a sore bum.  He rolls onto his side, groaning, to find emerald green curtains right in front of his face.  He’s… not in his own dormitory.

Suddenly, it all comes back to him, flashing in bits and pieces: the party, Louis and Liam talking, getting drinks with Liam, the fireworks, going up to the dorms, kissing Liam  _(kissing Liam!)_ , running into Harry and Louis, climbing onto Harry’s lap and riding his cock while Louis got his mouth around him, and then… nothing.  Zayn groans, pulling back the curtain a fraction to see Louis rifling through his nightstand clad only in a pair of tight black briefs.  His hair is sticking up all over the place, and Zayn imagines that he himself probably looks worse.

“Oh, you’re up,” says Louis, looking over at him.  “Want some tea?”  
“I want to die,” groans Zayn.

“Cheerful,” says Louis, pouring out a cup for him anyway.

“How’re you so awake?” Zayn grumbles.  “You were as drunk as I was last night.”

“Professor Malfoy gave me this yesterday,” explains Louis, holding up a small vial full of crushed herbs.  “Said that if I was planning on having any kind of proper Friday night then I’d need this in the morning.  It’s in your tea.”

Zayn, who had been sipping on the tea, immediately spits it out in alarm.  “Wait, what – what exactly is it?”

Louis frowns.  “Well don’t spit it out, it won’t work that way!  He said it’s like a Pepperup Potion, but with more mandrake root, and I  _definitely_ detect some wormwood in it, which would explain the added energy–”

Zayn tunes him out and takes a large gulp of the tea, scalding the roof of his mouth, but within seconds he does start to feel a lot better.  “Thanks,” he tells Louis.

“Don’t mention it,” says Louis.  “I can’t let anyone else know I have this, though, otherwise  _everyone_  will want some.”

“Where is everyone, by the way?” asks Zayn.  The dormitory that Louis and Harry share with Stan, Tom, and Tom’s friend Max is oddly quiet.

“They’re all passed out in the common room,” says Louis, sipping on his own tea.  “We three are the only ones who made it to beds, apparently.”

“Speaking of beds,” says Zayn, “what happened after we fucked? I think I blacked out for a little bit–”

“That’s ‘cause you passed out,” comes Harry’s muffled voice from the bed behind Louis, “on my dick.”

“Oh, Harry’s up!” says Louis cheerfully, pouring another cup of tea.

“I _what?”_ asks Zayn, startled.

“Well, you were riding me and Lou was blowing you, right, and then when you came you just kinda, like, went limp and passed out before I could even come.  But, like, I didn’t exactly fancy fucking an unconscious person – it felt really weird – so we just kind of tucked you in and then went to my bed and finished each other off,” says Harry.

Zayn is suddenly hit with the mental image of Harry tenderly tucking him in while sporting a raging boner, making him snort into his tea.

“You bottomed,” says Louis, “which I thought was interesting, but if I’d known you were  _that_  drunk I probably wouldn’t’ve even–”

“No, no, it’s fine,” says Zayn.  “From what I do remember it was really good.”

“Practicing for Liam, eh?” asks Harry, finally emerging from under the covers and grinning.  Zayn’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline as Louis snickers.

“Shut up,” says Zayn.  “I don’t even know what he likes, considering he’s never done it before.”

 _“Oh_ , he's a virgin?” asks Louis, his eyes glinting.

“Oi, back off,” snaps Zayn.  “I’m his tutor, he falls under  _my_ protection.”

There’s a tense moment when all three of them glare at each other.  Then, they can’t help but burst out laughing; they all look disgusting, their hair sticking up and stuck to their faces, two of them are naked, and all of them are holding small, delicate porcelain teacups.

“Hey,” Louis says, beckoning Zayn over to Harry’s bed.  Zayn stands up on wobbly legs, makes it the precious few feet, and then collapses onto Louis and Harry, who cuddle him in close.  “I’m glad you didn’t choke on your own vomit in your sleep, Zee.”

“Thanks,” says Zayn.  He can feel Harry shaking with laughter underneath him.  “I love you too.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louis brews potions, Gryffindor and Slytherin play a Quidditch match, and Zayn and Liam make it official.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took some liberties with "Obscuro." I know it technically produces a blindfold but I liked the idea of temporarily blindness instead. 
> 
> Enjoy!

_“Slytherin!”_

_There’s a muffled gasp from the crowd that’s quickly covered up by hushed murmurings and bobbing heads of students trying to pretend that they aren’t craning to catch a glimpse of Louis.  Louis’s whole body goes hot and then cold in shock, and he feels like he’s in a daze as the Sorting Hat is lifted off of his head and Professor Weasley gives him a small pat on the back, ushering him off of the stool.  Slytherin had been the one House that Louis had automatically ruled out before being Sorted, purely on the basis that he doesn’t have magical parents.  There’s never even been a single Muggleborn in Slytherin, as far as he knows._

_He shuffles over quietly to the Slytherin table as the next student’s name is called.  “Liam Payne!”_

_Louis sits down at the long table, accepting a few stiff handshakes that don’t seem to be entirely genuine – and how could they be, really, when the Slytherins must be thinking that he’s tainting their House?  They’re oddly quiet and somber, not at all raucous like Gryffindor, the House into which Liam Payne has just been sorted.  Louis sees them offer Liam hearty slaps on the back and sincere hugs, and he feels like crying.  He’d thought… he’d imagined a welcome like that too, when he got here, imagined a House happy to have him and people excited to talk to him._

_Absurdly, he feels his lower lip start to tremble as he wonders what he did wrong, if this is all just a big joke they’re playing on him and he isn’t magical at all.  He already misses his mum and sisters terribly, and although he’s sitting at a big table in a large hall full of happy, chattering students, he’s never felt so alone._

_The next student who gets Sorted into Slytherin is named Tom, and he’s welcomed in with whoops and shouts.  He already seems to know most of the people at the table, and he only spares Louis a cold sneer before turning back to the people gathered around him.  Louis hurriedly wipes at his eyes, not wanting his new housemates to see him crying and think him even more pathetic than they already do.  He wonders how he’s going to make friends at all, if his own House doesn’t want him and the rest of the Houses don’t like Slytherins._

_“Slytherin!” the Sorting Hat calls again._

_Louis looks up, sees a boy with a goofy grin and a mop of curly hair slide off the stool and make his way over to their table.  “That’s Anne Cox’s son,” says one of the older-looking Slytherins.  “My dad says she’s a pureblood, and apparently her whole family got really upset when she married a Muggle.”_

_“He’s got good blood, though,” says another one.  “Can’t help his father, but the Coxes have been in Slytherin for hundreds of years.”_

_There are approving murmurs up and down the table and Louis tries to sink lower into his seat, to no success.  The boy comes closer and, oh, he’s going to sit on Louis’s side of the table._

_“Harry, nice to meet you,” says the boy sitting next to Louis, extending a hand over Louis’s head like he doesn’t exist.  “Emerson Flint.  I’m going to be one of your Prefects.”_

_“Nice to meet you,” echoes Harry, then plops down right next to Louis.  His wand falls out of his pocket and rolls underneath the table.  “Oops,” Harry says, and Louis is about to go and reach for it just to try to endear himself to_ somebody _in this bloody House, but then Harry reaches under the table to get it himself, hitting his head pretty hard on the underside of the table on the way up.  He straightens up, dazed, then catches Louis’s eye and bursts into laughter._

_Louis giggles despite himself; Harry doesn’t seem so bad. “Hi,” he says shyly._

_“Hi yourself,” says Harry. “M’name’s Harry, what’s your name?”_

_“Louis,” says Louis.  He doesn’t offer his last name, knowing it doesn’t mean anything to anyone at the table and hoping Harry’s won’t ask for it._

_“Louis,” repeats Harry to himself.  “That’s a nice name.  D’you want Bertie Botts, Louis? My mum sent me with this massive pack and I haven’t been able to eat all of ’em.”_

_“Sure,” says Louis slowly.  He isn’t sure what Bertie Botts is, but he doesn’t want to be rude._

_Harry removes a mangled plastic package from one of his pockets.  At first, Louis can’t tell what’s inside, but then – oh, they’re jelly beans.  There are a lot more colors of these than there are of regular jelly beans, though.  “Are there any ones I should avoid?” he asks Harry._

_“Earwax,” says Harry immediately, “vomit, and liver.  I think my cat ate all the liver-flavoured ones, though, so we should be good.”_

_“Oh, you have a cat?” asks Louis, picking around in the bag before he selects a nice, generic-looking red one._

_“Yeah, she’s just a kitten,” says Harry, selecting out a bean for himself before putting them back in his pocket.  From his other pocket he pulls out a tiny, fluffy white kitten, who mewls happily at the attention._

_“Oh, she’s adorable!” squeals Louis, chewing on his bean, which tastes a lot like hot peppers but he’s going to suffer through it.  “Does she have a name?”_

_“I just got her yesterday,” says Harry, “but I was thinking, like, Dusty.  Because she’s white, right, and she keeps collecting all this dust on her fur.”_

_Louis thinks it’s a stupid name.  He looks at the kitten, who also seems to think it’s a stupid name.  “You should name her whatever you want,” he says eventually, smiling at Harry, who beams back at him._

_“Dusty it is!” announces Harry happily, nuzzling his nose into her fur._

_“Would you mind – d’you think I could hold her?” Louis asks tentatively.  “She just looks so soft.”_

_“You can try,” says Harry.  “She scratched and clawed my sister yesterday, so be careful.”_

_Louis holds his arms out and Harry tentatively places the kitten into his hands, waiting to see if Dusty reacts negatively.  Instead, she runs her raspy tongue over Louis’s thumb and then seems to decide that he’s alright; she squirms a bit, though, so Louis pulls her in closer and snuggles her against his chest, which makes her purr happily._

_“Awww, she likes you!” coos Harry.  “Good thing, too, ’cause we’re gonna be spending loads of time together.”_

_“We are?” asks Louis distractedly, still focused on the little purring kitten folded up in his arms._

_“Well, yeah,” says Harry, like it’s obvious, “we’re going to be best friends.”_

_At this, Louis looks up at Harry, who’s still smiling goofily, and he feels himself start to smile as well.  Maybe Hogwarts isn’t going to be so bad after all._

Louis wakes up at that moment due to a well-placed kick in the knee from a sleeping Harry.  He’s starfished on the small dormitory bed, taking up almost every inch of available space and pushing Louis to the very edges.  They used to be able to fit comfortably on one of these beds, back when all they did when they were alone was lay next to each other and talk for hours, but now they have to squish together to fit.  It’s not a huge sacrifice, really.

It’s not often that Louis dreams of the day that he and Harry first met, but when he does he always wakes up with a tight feeling in his chest afterward, like his heart’s a little too big for his ribs to contain.  He doesn’t know where he’d be if Harry hadn’t been Sorted into Slytherin; he probably would have begged Headmistress McGonagall to let him go home and attend a normal school for normal Muggle children, by now.  But by some miraculous twist of fate Harry  _was_  put in Slytherin, and Louis remembers even that very day knowing that he’d found his best friend.

The sun isn’t up yet, so there’s no reason why Louis shouldn’t be able to get in a few more hours of sleep.  He maneuvers around Harry’s gangly limbs to snuggle into his side, bare skin on bare skin, and falls back asleep with a smile on his face.

xxx

The month of October passes by quickly for Louis, and he feels like absolutely doesn’t have enough hours each day to get his Quidditch team ready for the Slytherin-Gryffindor contest that’s happening the last weekend of the month.   Harry keeps saying that Louis is freaking out over nothing, but Louis is captain of the goddamn team and it’ll reflect poorly on him if they lose, especially after winning last year’s Cup.  Slytherin put a lot of faith in Louis by naming him captain last year, and he obviously paid them back tenfold, but he has to make sure to keep up the good work this year or else the annoyed mutterings about a  _Muggleborn_  captaining the team will start up again.  Louis doesn’t want to give his House any reason to doubt him.

To top it off, Zayn walks around looking so fucking chipper and happy all time that Louis wants to punch the permanent dreamy smile right off of his stupid face.  Apparently Zayn and Liam _kissed_ that night at the party but have agreed to spend a little bit more time getting to know each other before doing it again or proceeding any further, which means two things: one, that Zayn’s in a constant state of sexual frustration that he takes out on Harry and Louis and two, that Zayn gushes about how awesome Liam is all the time, even right after he hooks up with Harry and Louis.  Which, like, Louis knew from the beginning that it was just sex, but it seems a little rude for Zayn to go all starry-eyed over another bloke with his spent cock still hanging out of his trousers.

“And does Liam know you’re sleeping with us?” Louis asks him.

“Yeah, he thinks it’s, like, fascinating or something,” Zayn says happily.

_“What?”_

“I told you, he hasn’t had any experience with blokes, he thinks, like… he thinks we’re some kind of sexual crusaders,” Zayn explains, then sighs dreamily and closes his eyes.

Zayn likes weird things.  Louis will just leave it at that.  The point is, Louis is stressed out about a lot of things and the very least Zayn can do is be stressed out with him.  He’s such a shit friend.

Harry is an absolute saint, though; he takes to giving Louis massages almost every other night, and the amount of time they spend cuddling has gone up drastically.  Louis knows Harry is just trying to keep him happy so he won’t blow up at anyone, but he’ll gratefully accept cuddling and massages no matter _what_ the underlying reasons are.  The team benefits from Harry’s attentiveness, if Louis is being honest; there are definitely times when he’s about to fucking lose it during practice and the only thing that stops him is the fact that he woke up that morning wrapped snugly in Harry’s arms with the other boy kissing up the column of his throat.  As it is, Louis pushes the team hard, but not  _too_  hard, and even _he_ has to admit that the team is coming together quite nicely.

Stan and Jesy, who have been Beaters together since their fifth year, have only gotten better since then.  Stan’s really precise with his aim, so Louis always knows he can count on him to rattle the other team with a well-aimed warning Bludger or two, and Jesy hits so hard that she once broke a Hufflepuff’s broom.  They work well together, and Louis isn’t worried at all about their performance in the upcoming game.  JJ has been Slytherin’s Seeker since his fourth year, so Louis has nothing to fret about on that front.  It’s just the Chasers and Keeper that need the work, honestly.

Michael, their new Keeper, is definitely the best option they had out of all the students who tried out for the position, but he suffers from a bad case of nerves that only seems to be getting worse as the date of the match approaches.  Louis knows that yelling at him about how high-stakes this game is isn’t going to do anything but make it worse, but he’s at a loss for how to make it better.  He wants to try and recreate the high-stress environment of the Quidditch pitch during a game so that Michael can get used to it, but that would require a steady volume of Quaffles being shot at the goal posts, and to do this Louis seriously needs to whip the other two Chasers into shape.  Marjorie was on the team last year and was good enough to secure a spot again this year, but she’s seriously inconsistent with her shots and doesn’t like to pass, which makes her a favorite target of other teams’ Beaters.  Between running drills and teaching their newest Chaser, Richard, where to shoot the Quaffle from to give it the best trajectory, Louis has his hands completely full. 

“I’ve had Michael stay after practice a few times to try and defend shots that I make, just to give him  _some_  experience,” says Louis.  He and Professor Malfoy are busy brewing large stocks of Veritaserum to ship off to the Ministry of Magic.  “But I feel bad asking him to do it every time.”

“Do what you have to,” says Professor Malfoy.  “It doesn’t matter how good you and Hamblett are, if we don’t have a good Keeper nobody’s going to respect us as a team, even if we win.”

“Did you play Quidditch when you went to school here?” Louis asks.

Malfoy visibly shudders.  “Let’s not talk about that, now.”

“You  _did_  play Quidditch!” Louis exclaims, delighted.  “How come I’ve never seen your name on any trophies?”

“Slytherin didn’t  _win_  any trophies while I was on their team,” says Malfoy, cutting up some Boomslang skin a little more aggressively than necessary.

Louis blinks.  “Oh.” He pauses, not sure if he wants to continue, and then decides that he just  _has_  to.  “What position did you play?”

“Seeker,” says Malfoy.  He’s cut up the skin as much as possible and is now digging angrily into the cutting board with the tip of his knife.

 _“Oh,”_ says Louis in understanding.  “Well that’s not really your fault, Professor. I mean, you  _were_  going up against Harry Potter, yeah?”

Malfoy snorts violently, gripping the knife tightly, and Louis quickly tries to remember any sort of healing spell for stab wounds.  His professor surprises him, though, when he says, “It wasn’t Potter’s fault that I sucked.”

Louis doesn’t say anything, sensing that they’re having  _a moment_ , and instead keeps dutifully grinding up moonstone.

“My father essentially bought my way onto the team,” says Malfoy eventually, after a long sigh, “with a bunch of Nimbus 2001s.”

Louis snorts.  “Those are  _ancient_ , Professor!”  
Malfoy smirks.  “At the time, they were the fastest broom money could buy, and he bought them for the whole team. I was only in my second year, and  _sure_  I’d ridden a broom before, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into, only that I wanted the same kind of fame and glory that Potter was getting.”

“I think Liam told me that was the golden age of Gryffindor quidditch,” says Louis.

“It was,” says Malfoy.  “Fucking nightmare, honestly, they just kept  _winning,_  and whenever they lost it was only because something absurdly horrible happened to Potter during the game.  One time he literally ran into a Dementor and fell off of his broom after he fainted, so obviously Gryffindor didn’t win that one.”

Louis gasps.  “There was just a  _Dementor_  floating around above the pitch? Does that happen often, because I’ve never–”

“Times were different,” Malfoy says, shaking his head.  “We were all different. At the time I thought it was fucking  _funny.”_

“Rude,” says Louis, rapping him on the knuckles with the mortar.

“I was a little shit,” Malfoy agrees.  “I mean, I  _was_  raised to believe and think a certain way, but I just took it to the next fucking level because I was so jealous of all the attention Potter was getting.”

“You’re alright now,” Louis consoles him.  “I mean, you told Tom and the rest of them off the first day of my first year because they were teasing me about being Muggleborn.”

“They reminded me of what I used to be like,” explains Malfoy, “and I was the fucking worst, so I didn’t really have a choice but to tell them off.”

“Professor Weasley did the same thing earlier in the day,” Louis remembers.

“Yeah, she told me about it at lunch that day,” says Malfoy.  “I was on the lookout for them before they even came into my class.”

Louis blushes.  He feels kind of pathetic, that the teachers had to talk about him and discuss how to stop him getting bullied.  “You’re making me feel like a charity case.”

“Well,  _I_ was that awful to Professor Weasley when we were in school, if you can believe that,” Malfoy admits.

“No way!” Louis gasps.  “You two are, like, so close!”

“We are now, but you have  _no_ idea the groveling I had to do to make all of the bullying up to her,” says Malfoy.  “I sent her so many rare books from my family’s library that I think her husband started to get jealous.”

Louis laughs.  “I mean, as long as  _your_  wife didn’t get jealous I’d say you’re good.”

Malfoy chuckles and nods his head.  “But, yeah, by the time I realized that in addition to being Muggleborn she was a brilliant,  _brilliant_  woman, and that the two didn’t have to be mutually exclusive, she already hated my guts.  When I found out we would be teaching together, I knew I had to make amends.”

“Wow,” says Louis.  He feels like he should lighten the conversation up, somehow, so he goes with a dry, “What an inspirational story.”

“Shut up and add the fucking moonstone,” snaps Malfoy, sprinkling in the Boomslang skin.  “You’re distracting us from the task at hand, is what you’re doing.”

“I thought we were having a moment there, Professor,” says Louis innocently, adding two pinches of powder to the bubbling cauldron.

Malfoy shudders.  “If we’re going to be having ‘moments,’  _please_  call me Draco.  ‘Professor’ is starting to sound creepy.”

Louis laughs.  “Sure thing, Professor.”

Malfoy whacks him over the head with a rolled-up piece of parchment.  “You’re the worst apprentice I could’ve possibly picked.  We have to let this brew for a lunar cycle, now, so that’s all for today.”

Louis gathers his bag and rolls down the sleeves of his uniform shirt, which he had pushed up due to the heat of the fire underneath the cauldron.  “Good talk,” he says, smirking a bit and making Malfoy roll his eyes.

Just as Louis is about to exit his office, Malfoy calls, “Oh, and Louis?  Don’t worry about the match this weekend.  You’ll smash it, I promise.”

Louis wants to make some snarky comment about broken promises, but it’s not often that Malfoy is so openly nice to him (he’s usually more reluctantly fond).  “Thanks, Draco,” he says instead. 

The name feels funny on his tongue because he’s never used it before, but it makes Louis feel like he’s talking to a new friend for the very first time, which puts a smile on his face all the way back to his common room.

xxx

The day of the big match arrives and Louis is absolutely _seething_ with stress and anger from the minute he wakes up.  The night before, Louis had run some last-minute drills with Michael and they hadn’t gone so well, and he arrived back to his dormitory expecting to be able to vent to Harry about it.  Unfortunately, it was so late at night that Harry had already fallen asleep, which  _also_  put having sex out of the equation, which Louis was _really_  looking forward to because he always tops the night before Quidditch matches (sore bums and brooms don’t mix very well).  So, Louis went to bed stressed out and horny and too tired to get himself off, meaning that he wakes up the day of the match with a barely-controllable urge to pummel someone in the stomach until they cry. 

To make things even worse, Zayn casually lets slip at breakfast that he’s created a special green-and-scarlet scarf for the occasion due to his conflicting loyalties and, well – it’s not like Louis wasn’t expecting Zayn to cheer for Liam on _some_ level, but this game is Really Fucking Important to Louis and it  _stings_  to know that Zayn wouldn’t mind if Gryffindor won.  He’s very short with Zayn and barely touches his breakfast, pushing Harry off when he tries to coddle him and storming out of the Great Hall a full half-hour before they’re all due in the locker room. 

Harry follows behind him like a concerned shadow and Louis is about ready to scream at him to go away when they run into Professor Malfoy – or Draco, now, apparently.  Louis has been trying to use his first name more and more just to get used to it; it’s very flattering to know that his professor respects him enough to let Louis use his first name.

“Going out to the pitch already, Louis?” asks Malfoy.

“Yeah, I wasn’t hungry,” Louis mumbles, staring at the ground.

“Hey,” says Malfoy, snapping his fingers to get Louis’s attention until he looks up from the ground.  “I told you, you’re going to smash it.  Your team’s been training really hard.”

“I know they have,” grumbles Louis. “They probably hate me for it.”

“They love you, you know that,” Malfoy says.  “I overheard Michael telling all the fifth-years yesterday about how much time you spend with each of the players individually to make sure they’re in tip-top shape.”

“Fucking _Michael,”_ says Louis.  He’s  _so_  not in the mood for warm fuzzy feelings about how his team thinks he’s a nice  _person._ What matters is that they  _play well_ and don’t get smeared all over the field by the Gryffindors.

“Hey, go easy on him.  Remember how nervous you were your first game?”

“I play better when I’m nervous,” snaps Louis.  He’s just being difficult on purpose now because he’s in a shitty mood and is hell-bent on dragging anyone who talks to him down with him.

“Not everybody does.  Just something to think about,” Malfoy responds calmly.  He begins to walk away from them, but calls back, “And for fuck’s sake stop worrying, I’ve seen the Gryffindors practicing and their new Chasers are awful.”

Louis does smile at that.  “Thanks, Draco!”

He and Harry start to walk out toward the pitch.  They don’t speak as they cross the grassy field, crisp autumn leaves crunching under their feet.  Louis’s wispy, fleeting good mood dissolves again when Harry doesn’t say anything and instead keeps walking with him like Louis fucking  _owes_  him something, or… something.  And now it seems like Harry’s in a bad mood too from the stiff way that he’s walking.  God, he’s annoying.  Fuck everything.

When they finally get to the locker room, they find it completely empty, which isn’t surprising.  Once they’re inside, Harry finally speaks up, and it’s probably the worst thing he could have said:  _“So,_  how long has he been ‘Draco’ to you?”

Louis fucking  _loses_  it.  He’s always had a short temper, ever since he was very young, but it’s rare that he ever feels  _quite_  this angry.  “Are you serious, are you – are you  _fucking_  kidding me, Harry?  I’m about to – shit, this game is literally going to decide  _how much_  I get made fun of this year, do you understand that?  No, of course you don’t,  _you_ don’t get told how  _vile_  your parents are every time you fuck up, nobody gives a shit what  _you_  do, Harry, and – you know what, just, fuck you, you literally just ruined the only good moment I’m probably going to have all day, because we’re going to fucking  _lose_  and everybody’s going to  _hate_ me even more than they already do.”

They stare each other down, Louis breathing hard and fuming while Harry continues to glower at him. 

Finally, Harry says, “The only good moment you’re going to have all day?”

Louis wants to  _punch_  him.  “Yeah, because Michael can’t guard for shit and Zayn’s cheering for Gryffindor and you’re being a fucking moody _twat.”_

Harry steps closer to him and Louis feels his hackles rise.  “The  _only_  good moment?”

“Fucking spit it out, Harry,” snaps Louis, “the team’s going to be here in, like, ten minutes.”

“Better make this quick, then,” Harry grins, and then he’s dropping to his knees right in front of Louis and  _oh,_ if Louis hadn’t been so angry he could probably have seen this coming, but –

“Um,” he stammers, as Harry grips him through his trousers, and – Jesus, he’s already getting hard, when did that happen, “um.  Harry, we–”

“Shhh,” Harry shushes him, ghosting his lips over the bulge forming in Louis’s trousers.  He pushes Louis back a bit so that he makes contact with a wall, which is useful for many things, including but not limited to keeping Louis’s knees from giving out.  “You need to relax, you’re all wound up.”

“I don’t – the team–” Louis gasps out, his cock thickening rapidly.  It feels like all the blood is leaving his brain, he can’t even  _think –_

“Better hope one of them doesn’t show up early, then,” Harry murmurs, his mouth twisting into a devilish smirk as he begins to unbutton Louis’s trousers.  Louis groans softly, his hips twitching forward unbidden, knowing that Harry is probably  _hoping_  that someone will show up because he loves being watched.  Harry pulls him half-hard out of his trousers and Louis swallows back a moan as both of them watch his cock fatten up further right in Harry’s hand.  Harry hasn’t even really  _done_  anything yet, it’s just that Louis – he’s so  _on edge_ , has been for the last couple of days, and when he grips Harry’s hair tightly in both of his hands he isn’t sure whether he wants to yank Harry upright and kick him in the shin or pull Harry forward and choke him on his dick. 

Luckily, Harry makes that decision for him moments later by pursing his lips and enveloping his cockhead in sloppy, wet heat, tonguing at his tip and sliding his lips over him until Louis whines and jerks his hips, feeding another inch of his cock into Harry’s mouth.  Harry really goes for it then, and Louis can only moan and watch in awe as Harry sinks down, _down,_ pulling back once to wet his lips and then going for it again, and this time Louis can _feel_  the resistance in the back of Harry’s throat give way to crushing tightness that almost makes him come right then and there. 

Harry moans as Louis tugs on his hair, and Louis’s knees almost buckle when he sees Harry reaching down with one hand to palm himself through his own trousers.  He knows that Harry loves sucking cock, fuck, but seeing him get so hard that he has to touch himself through his clothes for relief  _just_  from having Louis’s cock down his throat is another story entirely.  Harry goes at it like it’s all he’s ever wanted, like he’s only at his happiest with his mouth stuffed full, and he’s so  _pretty –_ his lips are this newly-obscene shade of red, stretched tight around Louis’s cock, and his cheeks hollow out whenever he pulls up, and his eyes are closed in bliss, his eyelashes like feathery smudges on his milky skin. 

“Harry, um, unnh,” Louis stammers, trying to control the pace with his fingers in Harry’s hair but absolutely failing, “the t-team – um–”

Harry pulls off with a filthy smack of his lips.  “Y’have to come soon, then,” he whispers, his hot breath fanning over the tip of Louis’s cock, and _fuck_ his voice sounds absolutely _wrecked,_ all scratchy like something even a big drink of water won’t quite be able to cure.  Louis pushes his thumb into Harry’s mouth, watches as Harry’s eyes slide closed and he suckles on it, and – and, wow, three days of no sex must really have taken its toll on him because he finds himself already maddeningly close to coming.

“Harry,” he whines softly, pulling his thumb out of Harry’s mouth and replacing it with his cock once more.  One of Harry’s hands comes up to start playing with Louis’s balls, still trapped in his pants, squeezing and cupping them through the soft fabric; his other hand is still on his own crotch and he’s rocking into it, whimpering around Louis’s cock as he grinds the heel of his hand into his impressive hard-on.

Louis figures out what’s going to make him come, then, knows exactly what he’s going to do to Harry after he comes, and he pushes Harry’s head down  _hard_  to get himself closer to the edge that much faster.  Harry gags around him, and Louis can feel his throat convulsing tightly, hugging the ridge at the bottom of the swollen head of his cock right where he’s most sensitive, and he can feel Harry  _try_ to moan around the thick length filling his throat but it gets caught, vibrating against Louis’s skin.

“Hazza, oh – Jesus, fuck, m’coming–” Louis chokes out, twisting his fingers further into Harry’s hair and making him swallow as he comes hard down his throat.  He would normally be embarrassed about how fast he came, but he got this  _wicked_  idea while Harry was blowing him and it’s so hot that it makes his eyes roll back into his head as he feels Harry swallow around him.

Harry sucks on him until Louis pushes him away, and even then he seems a little reluctant to let go of Louis’s softening cock – he presses a kiss to the head as he pulls back and sits on his heels, licking his lips and frantically trying to undo his own trousers.  Louis quickly tucks himself back in and crouches down, then, leans forward and kisses him, tasting himself in the corners of Harry’s mouth as he licks in.  When he breaks the kiss, Harry is staring at him glassy-eyed, and, yeah, Harry might have the upper hand when his mouth is on Louis’s dick, but Louis knows how to make Harry stupid with even the simplest of touches.

“I’m sorry I was a twat,” Louis says innocently, placing his hand over Harry’s as the other boy struggles with an uncooperative button.

“You were just stressed out,” Harry says, like he’s not really listening, as he fumbles with his zip.  “I did what I had to,” he continues in a rush, giggling breathlessly.

“I was,” agrees Louis.  “You did.”  Then he pounces, knocking Harry onto his back and pinning both of his hands to his sides.  Hopefully the locker room floor has been cleaned sometime in the past week.  “You wanna do something else for me, baby?”

“I wanna get off,” Harry whines, trying to buck Louis off, but all of Louis’s extra workouts lately have paid off in the form of superior upper body strength. 

Louis squeezes his hands tighter and Harry stops struggling and looks up at him with wide eyes.  “We’re going to win,” Louis tells him, like it’s a confirmed secret instead of a hopeful guess.  It’s amazing, it really is, how one orgasm can boost his confidence so much, but here they are.  “Slytherin’s going to fucking win, Styles, and I think I want a little reward for my heroic efforts.”

“Be – besides glory and praise?” Harry jokes feebly, rutting up against Louis’s thigh.  Louis jams his thigh up into Harry’s crotch sharply, not enough to hurt him, but enough to make Harry suck in a surprised breath and cease all movement.

“You know how much I love it when you’re desperate,” Louis whispers, his lips close to Harry’s ear.  He tries to speak in full sentences, to make himself sound more authoritative, but he’s just so fucking excited that he finds himself stumbling over some of the words.  “I’d love it if you – fuck, if you didn’t get off now, ’d keep you horny ’til after the match so you’d be all pretty and perfect for me afterward.  You’d be, like, my spoils of war, yeah?”

“Lou,” Harry whines, then squeaks when Louis reaches a hand down and squeezes his hard cock through his trousers, “Lou, I  _need–”_

“Let me rephrase,” says Louis gleefully, giddy as he hears footsteps approaching down the locker room hallway, “someone’s coming and you don’t have a choice.”

He leaps off of Harry, who manages to stagger to his feet and tuck his hard cock up into his waistband just in time for Stan to walk in, already clad in his Quidditch uniform.

“Morning, lads!” he says cheerfully, walking over to his locker to get out his broom.

“Ready to wipe the pitch with Gryffindor’s arses?” Louis asks, and he feels fucking  _powerful_ , like nothing can stop him from getting what he wants.

“I was born ready,” Stan agrees viciously, turning around with his Dragonflame 2500 clutched firmly in his hand.  He gets his first proper look at Harry, with his flushed cheeks, rumpled robes, and bruised, swollen lips.  “Oh, shit, sorry, did I interrupt something?”

“No!” Harry squeaks, his voice almost a full octave higher than normal.  “What would make you say that?”

“Oh, it’s just… um…” Stan frowns uncomfortably.  “It’s just, you’ve got sperm on your cheek.”

Harry goes even redder, which Louis didn’t know was possible, and it’s almost obscene how fast the tables have turned from five minutes ago when Harry had a smirk on his face and Louis’s balls in his hand.  Harry will pretend to act indignant and insulted, but Louis knows that the humiliation is going to leave him even more horny and frustrated – god, Louis has  _such_  good ideas.  Tonight’s victory sex is going to be some of the best sex of his  _life._ All he has to do now is win.

xxx

Winning is, as always, easier said than done.

Professor Malfoy was correct, though, in saying that Gryffindor’s new Chasers aren’t very good.  Leigh-Anne, who is Gryffindor’s only returning Chaser, grows visibly frustrated with them as the game goes on and they keep taking Bludgers to the stomachs because of their unwillingness to pass. 

“For fuck’s sake, don’t give them such an easy target!” Leigh shouts at them.  “George, stop crying!   _Stop bloody crying,_ we’re in the middle of a fucking  _game_  here!”  Louis sees Jesy hit a Bludger at her, causing her to veer off course as she tries to make her way over to the goalposts with the Quaffle clutched firmly under her arm. 

“Stan!” Louis yells, trying to keep up with Leigh and get Stan’s attention at the same time.  “D’you remember what we practiced?”

“You want me to do it?” Stan yells back.  Another Bludger comes Leigh’s way courtesy of Jesy, causing Leigh to dive and Louis to follow, flying a little ways underneath her.

“Yeah, just be careful or the whole school will hate you!” Louis shouts.  He watches over his shoulder with thinly veiled anticipation as Stan draws his bat back, taking careful aim and then firing a Bludger at Leigh’s back.  The crowd draws a collective breath, but then starts cheering or booing accordingly as the Bludger doesn’t harm Leigh at all but instead neatly knocks the Quaffle right out from under her arm.  Louis’s waiting below to catch it, and he speeds off gleefully with it as he hears an exasperated Niall shout  _“Shower of cunts!”_  from above the entire scene.

“Fucking _aces,_ mate!” Louis shouts at Stan, flying at top speed toward Liam, who’s guarding Slytherin’s goalposts.  He sees Liam hunker down, trying to steel himself for when Louis shoots, and he’s going to get it  _in,_  this is what he’s been training  _months_  for –

“Look out!” yells Richard from his left, and Louis doesn’t even _think,_ just reflexively heaves the Quaffle over to his teammate milliseconds before a Bludger hits him right in the stomach.Pain explodes in his abdomen, his breath rushes out of him with a  _woosh,_  and he slumps forward, trying to both hang on to his broom and stop himself from throwing up in front of the entire school.

“Are you alright?” he hears Richard yell.  Louis wonders if Richard’s going to make it to the goalposts without also getting hit by a vicious Bludger, but he can’t be arsed to lift his head up just yet to look.

“Go!” Louis wants to shout.  “Go score a fucking goal while everyone’s distracted!” Unfortunately, he still doesn’t really have any air in his lungs to speak of, so he weakly waves his arm and hopes that Richard gets the picture.

Louis is just starting to feel like he can maybe move around again when he feels rather than sees another Bludger hit him in the side.  He slides off of his broom with a pained yelp and only barely manages to grab onto it with one hand, saving himself from plummeting to the ground below.

“That’s  _another_  hit taken by Tomlinson,” Jaymi Hensley’s voice, magically magnified, comes booming over the pitch as the crowd gasps.  “Samuels seems to  _really_  have it in for Slytherin’s captain today - are we  _sure_  that’s not some sort of penalty?”

As muffled whispers and shuffling papers sound over the magical microphone, Louis laughs hysterically, resolving that once he gets back up onto his broom he’s going to grab Stan’s bat and bludgeon Andy right into the Hospital Wing.  Then, Jaymi’s voice comes back on: “Update, there are apparently  _no_ penalties at all in the sport of Quidditch.  Anything goes, ladies and gents, sorry for the confusion.  Oh, and that’s a goal just now by Richard Griffin!  Ten points for Slytherin!”

A cheer goes up from the Slytherins, and the knowledge that Richard actually managed to  _score points_  boosts Louis into flinging his other arm up, grasping onto the broom with both hands and trying to pull himself back on.  His upper body strength is pretty good – he can do a lot of pull-ups on stationary bars, but trying to pull himself up onto a moving object that sinks down in the air every time he applies more force on it is proving to be very difficult.  Eventually, though, he manages to swing one of his legs over the broom, and the rest is easier from then on out.  When Louis sits up on the broom, he scrubs his hand over his face, wiping off the cold sweat that had broken out when he’d thought he was going to fall, and tries to ignore his pounding headache.

He looks over, sees Leigh speeding toward Michael for a retaliation goal, and Louis cringes, hoping she doesn’t go too hard on him, he  _is_  new, after all – but when she shoots, he must anticipate the flicker in her eyes or  _something_  because he doesn’t fall for her fake left and instead zooms up toward the center goalpost and  _blocks her shot_.

A whoop goes up from the Slytherin crowd and Louis fists-pumps gleefully, feeling like all of the hard work and late, stressful nights he poured into the team are actually paying off.

The rest of the game goes in a similar vein; Michael lets some goals in, yeah, and Liam blocks an annoyingly large percentage of Louis’s shots, but strangely enough lets in a relatively large amount of shots from the other two Chasers (Louis thinks it’s probably because they’ve been playing each other for three years, now, and Liam knows all of his tells).  JJ and Niall hover over the rest of their teams, keeping a sharp eye out for the Snitch; when the score is 110-100 Gryffindor-Slytherin, the two Seekers turn their heads at identical moments and take off like bats out of hell.

“It looks like both Seekers have spotted the Snitch!” Jaymi’s voice echoes over the excited murmurings of the crowd.

And then Louis spots it, too; it’s hovering very close to Andy Samuels’ left ear, who doesn’t seem to have noticed it yet.  Louis might have let him know in other circumstances – for example, when he  _hadn’t_  nearly been knocked off of his broom by two Bludgers that Andy sent – but, the situation being what it is, he decides to just sit back and enjoy the show.  Niall and JJ are flying full-speed toward Andy, but his back is turned to them and so he doesn’t see them, only turns around when they’re seconds away from him and Niall is frantically screaming, “Andy,  _move!”_

It’s too late, though, and the two of them collide with Andy, frantically grabbing at the air around his head as their brooms knock together and their momentum carries the three of them hurtling sideways, descending toward the ground.  Louis and the rest of the stadium watch with bated breath as they hit the ground with enough horizontal velocity that they keep on rolling, tangled together in a pile of flailing limbs.  It would be funny literally  _any_  other time, but the Snitch is somewhere in that pile of boys and the fate of the game depends on who’s holding it.

When they finally roll to a stop, there’s a brief struggle as they try to reclaim their limbs and push each other away, and then JJ pops up, beaming, the golden Snitch held aloft over his head, clutched firmly in his hand.

“JJ Hamblett has caught the Snitch!  That’s one hundred and fifty points for Slytherin, and the match is over.  Slytherin wins!”

Louis sags into his broom in relief as the stadium erupts, Gryffindors booing and Slytherins cheering loudly.  He feels himself break into relieved laughter, a smile stretching his face so wide it almost hurts as he flies down to tackle his Seeker along with the rest of his team.  Niall and Andy are shouting angrily at each other, throwing blame back and forth as the Slytherins dogpile happily right next to them.

“You were all brilliant,” Louis shouts at them, hugging them tightly.

“I think it’s important to remember,” says Stan, his face squished under somebody’s armpit, “that you made us who we are today, Mr. Captain Sir, and without your careful mentorship and guidance–”

“Oh my god, shut  _up,”_ groans Louis, completely unable to keep the smile off of his face.

xxx

After the team has showered and changed, they exit the locker room to a small throng of their adoring housemates.  Zayn’s there waiting for him, and Louis can only assume that Harry is on his way.  Zayn hugs him tightly.  “I’m so happy for you,” he says once they’ve pulled back, and Louis wonders if it’s possible for his face to become stuck in a permanent grin.

Louis tells him about leaving Harry hanging and invites him to join in the fun later that night. For the first time in over a year, Zayn apologetically shakes his head.

“Liam asked me to be  _boyfriends_  today.”

Louis gasps.  “Zayn Malik, settling down!” He pauses and thinks, then says, “So that means you won’t be joining us anymore, then?”

Zayn nods.  “We’re going on a date to Madam Puddifoot’s tonight,” he informs Louis, who fights the urge to vomit at the sappiness.  “You guys could come with, if you want.”

Louis frowns at him.  “Like… like a double date?”

“Sure, why not?” asks Zayn.

“Zayn, we’ve been over this,” says Louis, like he’s talking to a small child, “Harry and I can’t date.”

“Your reasoning’s literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard–”

“We’d both be each other’s first relationships!  And everybody knows first relationships  _never_  work out, somebody always fucks them up–”

“My mum and my dad were each other’s first relation–”

“An outlier,” Louis interrupts him again, “among a general trend of failure.  And I like Harry too much to risk things getting weird between us.”

It’s true.  Somewhere down the line, Louis is one-hundred percent convinced that something is going to go wrong.  Louis has a feeling that he himself is probably going to do something to fuck it all up, and he doesn’t want to put either of them through that.

“What about me?” asks Harry, coming up and hugging Louis.

“Hey, Hazza,” says Louis, nuzzling into him.  When Harry pulls back, Louis continues, “we were just talking about how you and I can’t date.”

“Oh,” says Harry, scratching at the back of his neck, “yeah, right, because one of us would, um, screw it up or something.”

“Exactly!” exclaims Louis, presenting Harry to Zayn as if to say  _I told you so._ Harry doesn’t look very happy, though; Louis will have to ask him why later.  Maybe it was something that happened during the Quidditch match.  Louis doesn’t like Harry to be unhappy.

Zayn shakes his head, opens his mouth as if to say something, and then closes it again, giving up.  Finally, he says, “Well, then, I’m going to go get ready for tonight.  Great job, again, Lou.”

“Thanks, Zee,” Louis beams, hugging him again.  When Zayn leaves, it’s just Louis and Harry; Louis looks over at his friend and sees him staring off blankly into space.

“Earth to Harry,” says Louis, snapping his fingers in front of Harry’s face. 

Harry startles, then looks over at Louis and smiles. “Y’wanna walk back?” he asks, slinging an arm around Louis’s shoulders.  Louis nods and slips his arm around Harry’s waist, and the two of them walk back to the castle together, Louis chattering away happily about the game.

xxx

“’S just you and me now, babe,” Louis whispers in Harry’s ear.  They’re both naked on Harry’s bed, the curtains are drawn, and Louis has cast _Muffliato_  over the four-poster to make sure nobody who happens to walk in will hear them.

“Just us two,” Harry replies softly.  Each of his hands are tied to one of the thick columns at the corners of the head of the bed, and he’s flushed all the way down to his tummy, his cock hard and curving up to rest against his belly.  It had taken almost nothing to get him hard, and the knowledge that he’d been on-edge and horny all day had gotten Louis hard in record time as well.  Louis is sitting on his thighs, leaning over him and breathing hotly against the shell of his ear.

Louis sits back, admiring the view as Harry whines and pulls at the thick silk ties that bind him to the bed.  He meets Harry’s eyes and is nearly overwhelmed by all the desperation and intensity he sees in them.

“I feel like I’ve been hard all day,” Harry whispers, like it’s a secret meant just for Louis.

Louis smirks at him.  “Aren’t you glad we won, then? I might not’ve let you come at all if we’d lost.”

Harry groans and closes his eyes, overwhelmed.  Louis gets an idea, then, and reaches hastily for his wand.  _“Obscuro!”_

Harry gasps and, although Louis can’t see any outward effects, he knows that Harry’s vision has suddenly been taken away from him.  He stares unseeingly upward, his blind eyes darting around frantically.  “Lou – Lou, I–”

“Is this okay?” asks Louis gently.  He’s praying that it is, because,  _fuck_ , seeing Harry this helpless is so hot.  “I can remove it, love.”

“No, no – it’s, um, it’s fine–” Harry chokes out, his eyes still darting around as a thick bead of precome forms at the tip of his cock and then dribbles down onto his stomach.

“Oh, we  _like_  this, don’t we,” Louis murmurs, and Harry nods, blushing.  Louis reaches down and teases just the tip of Harry’s cock with his index finger, spreading the precome around, and Harry jolts, moaning and pulling frantically against his bonds.  He isn’t – shit, he isn’t going to be able to anticipate anything Louis does to him, and Louis feels almost lightheaded with the rush of power he’s suddenly experiencing.

“I’ll add this to the list, then,” Louis says lowly. 

“W-what list?” asks Harry, trying to roll his hips up into Louis’s hand.

“The list of things that get you off,” Louis says, grinning.  “Being tied up, not being able to see, all spread out so I can do anything I want to you.”

Harry moans again, and Louis reaches up to lightly pinch at his nipples.  Not being able to anticipate the touch, Harry jolts away wildly and lets out a strangled groan when Louis’s fingers follow him wherever he goes.  His cock is dribbling precome steadily, now, slicking up his shaft and shining in a little pool on his stomach.

Louis fucking loves this – one of his absolute favorite things in the  _world_  is making Harry fall to pieces under his mouth and fingers and listening to all the different noises he can coax out of him.

“Wanna–” Harry gasps, then groans again as Louis’s fingers trail down his torso, lightly tickling him.

“Mmm?” Louis prompts, bypassing Harry’s cock entirely and continuing down his legs, pressing in lightly and rubbing his skin. 

“Wanna come,” moans Harry, his eyes darting around like he’s trying to seek out Louis.  “Please, ’ve waited all day, Lou–”

“You can wait a bit longer,” says Louis, and Harry squeezes his eyes shut and lets out a strangled sort of sob as Louis starts to play with his balls, gently rolling them around in his hands.  “Can’t you, sweetheart?  I think I’ve earned it, yeah?”

“Um,” Harry chokes out, his cock twitching so hard that Louis can actually  _see_  it jerk, “um, yeah, yeah I can wait, fuck–”

Louis leans down to lick up the wetness on Harry’s stomach, his tongue brushing against the tip of Harry’s cock but not providing any real friction.  Harry’s eyes fly open again and his eyebrows crease together as he desperately pulls at the silk ties binding him to the bed.  Louis laughs against his skin, his chuckle vibrating against Harry’s sensitive cockhead as he takes him fully into his mouth.  Harry’s dick is heavy and warm on his tongue, and Louis can’t help but moan as he takes more in until he’s nearly gagging.

“Oh god,” Harry moans.  “Oh, my god, keep doing that, fuck, m’close,” and of  _course_  Louis has to pull off then just to hear the frustrated sobbing sound that Harry makes and to watch the boy underneath him thrust his hips up, blindly searching for something to make him come.

Louis keeps torturing and teasing him this way for well over fifteen minutes; he’s very patient when he wants to be, and he’s letting himself have this now as a reward for a job well done and a celebration of his victory.  Harry looks so pretty when, after the first seven minutes, he loses his words entirely, and he only communicates with  _nnngh_ s and  _fuck_ s.  His sweat is soaking into his hairline and beading on his chest, and when Louis tires of sucking on one of his nipples he leans up to lick the sweat off of Harry’s collarbones while he continues to play with the head of his cock, just lightly holding it between his thumb and forefinger and occasionally squeezing very gently.

After fifteen minutes, Harry stops making noise entirely, just stares unseeing above him with his mouth permanently open, like his nerves have short-circuited and left him incapable of doing anything besides  _taking_   _it._   Louis grins and crawls up the long length of his body and eventually straddles his neck, holding his own hard cock against Harry’s lips.  Harry makes a noise then, a little gasp of pleasure, and his eyes slide shut as his mouth opens, his lips already bruised and red from how much he’s been biting them.

“Wanna suck me, babe?” Louis asks, rocking forward a little bit.  Harry moans and nods quickly, stretching his neck up to try and get Louis’s cock in his mouth.  He’s so fucking eager for it that Louis almost comes on the spot, and then he has to really focus on holding himself back as Harry’s plump lips wrap around him and start sucking.

Louis had been planning on topping tonight, but he suddenly really  _really_  likes the idea of riding Harry and making him hold off coming until Louis has, so he grabs for his wand and, not wanting to break the moment by whispering a spell out loud, thinks  _Accio Lube_  as hard as he can. Non-verbal spells don’t always work for him, especially not when his brain’s all fuzzy from having his cock sucked, but this time he’s lucky and the lube flies out of one of his drawers.  It smacks him in the face because Louis has less than stellar aim, but it’s a small price to pay for remaining silent and not letting Harry know what he’s up to.

Very, very quietly, Louis snaps open the bottle of lube, shakily squeezing some onto his fingers as Harry moves his mouth tightly up and down the length of his cock.  He brings his slick hand around to his hole and pushes one finger right inside, biting his lip to avoid making any noise.

“You’re doing so good, darling,” he praises Harry, hoping his voice doesn’t come out too shaky.  Harry moans and redoubles his efforts to get more and more of Louis down his throat.  Louis swears softly and adds another finger, trying not to touch his prostate lest he just completely lose it and come down Harry’s throat.  He focuses on merely stretching himself out, getting himself ready for Harry’s cock.  When he’s comfortably up to three fingers and is starting to rock his hips, fucking Harry’s mouth, he knows it’s time to move on and get Harry’s cock inside him before he comes.

He pulls out of Harry’s mouth and slides back down his body, making Harry whine brokenly, his vocal chords scratchy.  Louis adds more lube, smearing it around his hole to make up for the fact that he won’t be putting any on Harry’s cock because he wants to take him completely by surprise.  Then, he straddles Harry, reaching up to wipe his lubed fingers on Harry’s chest.  Harry’s brows crinkle in confusion at the presence of the slick, but before he can think about it too hard Louis’s sinking down onto his sensitive cock, moaning as the thick head pops past the tight ring of his hole.

“Oh,  _oh_ , oh my god–” Harry gasps, his chest coming off the bed with how much his back is trying to arch.  “Fuck, Lou, fuck–”

“Shhh,” Louis soothes him, though he can’t resist a satisfied moan as he finally sits all the way down on Harry’s big cock, “just let me ride you, yeah, and don’t come until I do, okay?”

“I, um – Lou–” Harry’s incoherent, his eyes reflexively darting back and forth between where their bodies are joined and roughly where Louis’s face is even though he can’t see anything.

Louis starts to move, sighing happily as Harry’s cock brushes against his prostate every time he sinks down.  He always comes so fast when he can control the angle; when Harry’s pounding him into the mattress, Harry doesn’t like to make it  _too_  good, likes to switch up the angle and stretch it out until they’re both sweating and pleading with each other, but when Louis is riding Harry, Louis gets impatient faster and goes for that perfect angle every time.  Call him selfish for that, maybe, but Harry’s cock feels amazing inside him.

“So good, Haz, yeah, your cock is  _perfect,”_ Louis gasps, and Harry lets out a pleased moan, trying to thrust his hips up and fuck Louis harder.  Louis isn’t having it, though, brings his hands down to hold Harry’s hips and says, “Stop moving, Harry, this is about –  _oh,_ fuck– this is about me right now, remember?”

“Sorry,” Harry gasps, trying to lie still.  God, he’s so good for Louis, always trying to do what he says, and Louis moans and rides him harder, feeling himself building up closer and closer to the edge.  Harry’s biting his lip again, his teeth digging into his skin as Louis moves faster and faster on top of him.  The sight is so erotic that Louis is helpless against the impulse to get a hand on himself, using the precome he’s leaked as slick to help his hand glide up and down.

Louis’s rapidly losing the ability to speak in sentences or even form real words.  “Shit, babe, you’re gonna make – ah, you’re gonna make me come,  _fuck, oh my god_ , your cock’s gonna – make me –  _come–_ ” and that’s  _it_ , he’s  _gone,_ coming all over Harry’s stomach as the thick cock inside him fucks his orgasm right out of him.  He’s in bliss, arching his back as all of his muscles tense up and then relax all at once.

Harry keens as Louis squeezes rhythmically around him, and he looks like he’s about to cry.  “Louis – Lou, please, c’n I – I don’t think I can – stop, please will – will you let me –  _please–_ ”

“Yeah,” Louis groans, coming down from his high and working his hips at the same steady pace, riding out the aftershocks.  “Yeah, fuck, Hazza, c’mon–”

The affirmation has barely left Louis’s mouth when Harry throws his head back and comes with a grateful cry, his hips jerking up and his eyes rolling back into his head as he spills inside Louis, and it’s fucking  _hot_  how Louis can feel the warmth spreading up inside him – so hot that his own cock gives a weak jerk and another small bead of come appears at the tip. 

He looks down at Harry, who looks so blissfully relieved to have come, and pats himself on the back for a job well done.  As Louis gingerly climbs off him, though, Harry’s lower lip starts to tremble and his eyes blink open wetly.  “Louis, can you – um – please, I want to see you, Lou–”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Louis says, quickly scrambling for his wand and muttering,  _“Finite Incantatum.”_  Harry’s eyes immediately lock on his, telling Louis that his sight is restored, and the ropes binding him to the bed disappear as well.  He reaches up for Louis, still sniffling, and Louis dives on top of him, kissing his damp cheeks and stroking his sweaty hair.

“Thank you,” Louis murmurs into his mouth, “thank you so much, fuck, that was perfect.”

“It was?” Harry asks.

“Absolutely,” says Louis.   “Was it worth it? Waiting to come?”  
“Oh my god, yes,” says Harry at once.  “I felt like I was going to die, a couple of times, but when I finally did it – god, it felt  _so_ good.”

“I’m glad,” says Louis, kissing him again.

“Well, _I’m_ glad you won,” Harry tells him when they break apart for air.

“So am I, love,” Louis giggles.  “And not just because I got to play with you like that.”

“That was kind of a bonus,” Harry agrees.

Louis laughs.  “Do you want to shower before bed?”  
“No,” Harry says at once.  “Sorry, I know I’m, like, gross and stuff, but I’m fucking exhausted after that.”

“S’fine,” says Louis.  He snuggles into Harry’s sweaty body, perfectly content.  “We can just go to sleep like this.” 

They pull the covers up over themselves and fall asleep in each other’s arms, and the last thought Louis has before he falls asleep is the hope that everything will stay this simple and perfect.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zayn and Liam take a study break, Hermione has a job for Zayn, and the lads take a trip to Hogsmeade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next chapter! Thanks for waiting patiently :)
> 
> If it isn't clear, Zayn attended Hogwarts for the second half of his fourth year, but remained at his old school for the first half.

Now that Zayn and Liam are officially together, to say that their Potions tutoring sessions have gotten a bit off track is a massive understatement.  They always go to Zayn’s favorite secluded corner of the library with the intention of studying, but Liam’s lips are far too tempting and leagues more interesting to Zayn than the subtle, fine art of potion-making, so they usually just end up squeezed together in one armchair, cuddling and kissing and asking each other questions about themselves.

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter, because Zayn being Liam’s partner in class means that they always pass with good marks, so no additional tutoring is really necessary.  Sometimes, though, they  _will_  actually do homework for other subjects together, provided they can stay focused on it for more than five minutes at a time.  One class that Liam is actually a lot of help in is Muggle Studies, which Zayn has always found very interesting but extremely confusing.  They have a big exam coming up in that class, and Liam has prepared flashcards with which to quiz Zayn.

“What category do you want to start with?” Liam asks him, shuffling through the stack, which appears to be color-coded.  Merlin, he’s adorable.

“Whatever you want,” says Zayn, twisting around and pecking him on the lips.  It’s probable that sitting on Liam’s lap is making it more difficult for Liam to test him, but Zayn finds that he doesn’t care in the slightest. Liam is definitely going to be a bad influence on his marks.

“Okay, let’s start with ‘Hospital,’” Liam says, removing all of the red-colored cards from the stack and placing the rest on the desk in front of them.  “No peeking, now.”

“I’ll try not to,” sighs Zayn, leaning back onto Liam’s shoulder exaggeratedly and trying to get a glimpse of the backs of the cards. 

“Hey! Stop that!” Liam scolds him.  “Okay, the first one is ‘MRI.’”

Fuck, Zayn knows this, Zayn knows this – “Oh, it’s that, um – that machine, yeah?”

There’s a pause.  “There are several machines in hospitals, Zayn.”

“Ugh,” Zayn groans.  “It’s that one that – it’s like a giant scanner, right?  And you can see images of different body parts, inside.”

“Pretty much,” says Liam.  “And what do wizards use instead of MRIs?”

“There are loads of diagnostic spells,” says Zayn.  “My dad says there’s one that makes whatever organ has the problem light up so that you can see it through the skin.”

“Good,” says Liam.  “I’m pretty sure the professor said that each question would ask for the definition and the wizard equivalent, so we have to remember to study both of those.  Okay, the next one is ‘nurse.’”

Nurse?  Zayn’s not sure he’s ever heard that word before.  It probably has something to do with the fact that the Ravenclaws have Muggle Studies with the Slytherins, and sitting next to Louis means that Zayn absorbs next to no information due to the constant distractions his friend provides.

“I’ll give you a hint,” says Liam.  “My mum’s one.”

“Oh, a nurse is like a Healer!” Zayn remembers now.  “They go around and make sure patients have everything they need, and they try to get them better so they can get out of hospital.  Lou’s mum is one, too.”

“Oh, really?” asks Liam.  “We have even more in common than I thought, then.  It would be really weird if his dad’s a railroad engineer, too.”

“Oh, um – I dunno what his dad does, really.  His parents got divorced around the time I got here, so I’ve never heard much about his father,” Zayn tells him.

What he  _doesn’t_  tell Liam is that the man who raised Louis is actually his stepfather, and that his actual biological father left his mum while she was still pregnant with Louis.  Louis doesn’t like to talk about it, but from what Zayn’s gathered, the man proposed to Jay after several months of dating, stayed over at her flat for the first time ever that same night, and bolted before Jay even woke up the next morning.  He doesn’t want to tell Liam this; it’s not really his story to share.

“Oh,” says Liam.  “Well, our mums are nurses and we’ve both got non-magical parents, so that’s still a lot.”

“I’d say you guys should hang out,” says Zayn, “but I have a feeling Harry would get jealous.”

“What’s going on with them, anyway?” asks Liam, shifting Zayn in his lap.  This might be a new record for how quickly they’ve abandoned studying, honestly.

Zayn rolls his eyes.  “They’re both in love but Lou doesn’t want to admit it because he’s scared of fucking their relationship up and Haz just gets more and more upset every time Louis trivializes it.  It’s all going to blow up in their faces soon.”

“That won’t be fun,” mutters Liam.

“Don’t let me get involved, please,” Zayn begs him.  “They’re both going to try to drag me into it, and you have to stop them.”

 _“I_ have to stop them?” asks Liam, laughing and hugging Zayn tighter. “I’m not going  _near_  them when that happens.  Anybody with eyes can see that they’re kind of… like, intense.  About each other.”

That’s a good way to describe it, actually.  Liam is very unintentionally eloquent. 

“We should start building a safehouse now,” Zayn tells him, leaning back on his shoulder again.  “We can hide out in there and wait for things to blow over.”

“Mmm.”  Liam kisses his neck lightly, so lightly that it makes Zayn shiver.  “Sounds good to me.  D’you want to keep studying?”

“No,” Zayn says immediately.  “Or, we  _could,_  just… in my room, maybe.”

“Smooth,” says Liam, laughing into his skin.  “Is that what you say to all the boys?”  
“Shut  _up,”_ Zayn laughs, trying to squirm out of Liam’s grip.  Liam lets him, but only so they can both get up and gather their things, still laughing.  They both know that they’re just going to spend the rest of the night talking and kissing on Zayn’s bed, and at some ridiculously late hour Liam will bid him good night and sneak stealthily back to the Gryffindor common room. 

Zayn is… surprised, at himself, for how patient he’s being with Liam.  He’s gone from having fast, hard sex in one form or another with two other experienced boys almost every day of the week to just  _kissing_ , really, just kissing one boy whose only experience with guys is what he’s done with Zayn.  He thought he’d be going mad by now, but instead, he’s – he’s  _happy_  in a way that he wasn’t before, like something’s been added to his life that he didn’t know was missing, and it’s a really excellent feeling to have.  It probably has a lot to do with the fact that he knew, that he’s _always_  known, that Harry and Louis were always destined to end up together and that Zayn was just along for the ride (and the orgasms). 

That’s how it started out, anyway – when Louis and Harry had started kissing and touching and exploring each other back in fifth year, Zayn had been curious about it but hadn’t been involved; he’d hooked up with a couple sixth-year guys (and one girl) that year and would have been perfectly content continuing to do so if Harry and Louis hadn’t decided to try and push him to see how far they could go in his presence before he stopped them. It had started out innocently enough, just cuddling in the library while Zayn did homework with them, but it escalated to kissing and then full-on groping.  Late one March night, though, the three of them were spending time drinking in the Slytherin dormitories while everyone else was in Hogsmeade, and Louis and Harry started making out right next to Zayn.  Zayn was drunk, though, and too lazy to move, and so he stayed well past the point where he’d have usually gotten up and left, watching as Louis shoved his hand down Harry’s pants and got Harry off right in front of him, and – well, he hadn’t been content with just  _watching_  after that, really.

The three of them had done pretty much everything together after that – all of them were very sexually open-minded people, and there was pretty much nothing they hadn’t tried.  And it was fun, and they’d remained the very best of friends, but it had always felt temporary to Zayn, probably because it was lacking the intimacy of a real relationship.  Now, he has the emotional intimacy of a real relationship, just not the  _physical_  intimacy.  And yes, it is a bit frustrating, but Zayn doesn’t want to be a dick, so he isn’t going to push it.

They arrive at the entrance to Zayn and Perrie’s common room.  There’s a large portrait on the wall in front of them portraying the rebuilding of Hogwarts after the Second Wizarding War; it was painted at dawn, so everything is awash in pinks and golds, and an Auror in the foreground looks on happily as the castle is restored to its former glory.  He turns around when he hears Zayn and Liam approaching.

“Good evening, Master Malik,” he says graciously.  “Password?”

“Grindylow,” says Zayn.  The Auror nods, smiling, and the portrait swings forward.  Zayn and Liam walk into the common room to find Perrie and her friends painting their nails by the fire.

“Hello, boys,” Perrie calls.  Leigh-Anne holds up her hot pink nails in front of her face, blowing on them to help them dry. 

“Don’t mind us, just passing through,” says Zayn, walking with Liam up the stairs to his room.

“Have fun,” yells Jesy, and the girls dissolve into giggles as Zayn feels his face flame.  For Merlin’s sake, he’s literally had his tongue up a bloke’s arse, there’s no reason for him to feel embarrassed by  _this_.  He is, though, probably because nothing’s  _happened_ yet and everything feels so  _new_.

They walk up the stairs together, their hands brushing but never quite linking, and Zayn fights to keep the smile off of his face. 

When they get to Zayn’s room, Zayn immediately runs over to his bed and flops down on top of it, starfishing out and running his hands over the plush comforter happily and waiting for Liam to join him.  Liam laughs and sits on the side of the bed, then gets his flashcards out of his book bag again.

“What,” says Zayn.

“I was thinking,” says Liam, “you haven’t been a very good student lately, have you?”

Zayn’s mind immediately catapults to some sort of kinky student-teacher fantasy and he almost chokes on his own tongue.  Then, Liam continues, “So I was thinking, for every one of these you get right, you’ll get a kiss.”

Zayn stares at him.  Liam is smiling and does not appear to be joking.  “Liam,” he says, pulling his best bedroom eyes (and his best, if he does say so himself, are quite fantastic).  Liam looks at him and blushes, his hands fidgeting on the cards.  Zayn sits up halfway, grabs the front of Liam’s robes, and pulls Liam on top of him, the two of them falling back onto the bed.  The cards go flying everywhere and Liam’s face ends up inches from Zayn’s, his brown eyes wild.   _“Liam,”_ Zayn says again, lower, softer.

“Um,” Liam stammers, “right, well,” and then he lets Zayn pull him in for a kiss, their lips meeting softly.  Zayn’s hands still have purchase in Liam’s shirt; he uses them to pull Liam more completely on top of him, and Liam gasps, bringing one of his hands up to cup the side of Zayn’s face.  Liam is – Liam is now holding himself up over Zayn with just one arm, _fuck,_ and Zayn moans into the kiss as he lets go of Liam’s shirt with one hand to run his fingers over Liam’s bulging biceps.  Fuck, he’s so  _fit,_ and Zayn is suddenly very,  _very_  tired of only being able to appreciate Liam’s muscles through the bulky fabric of his robes. 

He begins to slide Liam’s robe off of his shoulders, mindful of going slow lest Liam become spooked and stop him, but when all it does is make Liam kiss him harder Zayn smiles into Liam’s mouth and pushes the robe down his arms.  Liam lets go of him and sits up, straddling Zayn and pressing their hard cocks together as he hurriedly takes off his robe.  They stare at each other, breathing heavily, and finally Zayn says, “Just thought there were – too many layers.”

Liam nods at him and swallows heavily and Zayn watches, mesmerized, as his throat bobs and the birthmark on his throat shifts tantalizingly with his skin.  He looks flustered as he motions at Zayn’s torso and then eventually says, “Can I, um – god, Zayn, I want to see you–”

Zayn grins breathlessly at him, gets out, “Fuck - fuck, yeah,” and then he’s hastily stripping out of his own robe (well, as hastily as he can with Liam sitting on top of him).  He begins to unbutton his own shirt, too, and then stops, not sure if Liam wants to proceed that far or not.  Zayn looks up at Liam, asking the question with his eyes as he loosens his tie.

“Yeah,” Liam breathes, “yeah, but I can – if that’s okay–” and Zayn’s nodding quickly and then Liam’s fingers are dancing across the buttons of his uniform Oxford, brushing lightly against Zayn’s skin as he reveals it slowly, inch by inch, and every time Liam’s fingers graze his skin it’s like a little electric tingle, making Zayn shiver.  Liam’s fingers are clumsy on the buttons, made worse by how distracted he’s gotten – they’re kissing again, sloppy and wet and more excited, and the roughness of Liam’s uniform shirt against Zayn’s bare chest is making Zayn moan and suck on his tongue.

Finally, Liam gets the last button undone, and he slides Zayn’s shirt off, reverent and careful.  Zayn loves the way Liam holds him, like he’s so fragile and special that he needs to be treated with the utmost care – although, to be quite honest, Zayn also wouldn’t mind Liam manhandling him and roughing him up to within an inch of his life, but the way Liam’s staring at his naked chest in awe is  _more_  than enough right now. 

Zayn grins at him, arching his back a little bit and preening as he pulls at his tie, knowing how good he looks.  Liam swallows again, then bends down and  _licks his collarbone_.

“Holy –  _shit_ , Liam,” Zayn gasps, fighting to keep his eyes open and watch as Liam’s tongue moves across his skin.

“I’ve never really – wanted – to, um,  _lick_  something – quite this much – before,” Liam admits between soft nips of Zayn’s skin, like he can barely control himself and can only tear his lips away from Zayn’s body for so long.  Zayn is  _so_  into it, and he closes his eyes happily and lays his head back on the pillow as Liam kisses his way up the column of his throat, undoing his tie completely and pulling it away from his body.

Liam’s lips find his again and they kiss hungrily, hands roaming more freely than they have in the past several weeks.  Zayn’s fingers move almost on their own volition to the buttons on Liam’s shirt and undo the top one, causing Liam to make a small noise in the back of his throat.  Zayn breaks the kiss to ask, “Okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Liam moans, then goes right back to kissing him, getting a hand under his head to cradle the back of his neck.  It’s hard work, undoing Liam’s shirt and tie while kissing him, but Zayn manages it, having to take several breaks to thrust up against his boyfriend to relieve some of the pressure in his quickly-hardening cock.  Liam’s getting hard against him, too; it’s happened several times when they’ve kissed but they’ve never  _done_  anything about it, but now Zayn feels like he’s going to  _explode_  if he doesn’t get some relief.

When Zayn finally manages to fully divest Liam of his shirt, he doesn’t even bother to hold back his moan at how built Liam is.  His arms are flexing and bulging from holding himself up, and his strong chest is covered by a delicious smattering of dark hair, and – and – he has  _abs_ , like, real defined abs that Zayn desperately wants to bite and bruise.

“You’re fucking fit,” Zayn blurts out, and Liam smiles, blushing.

“Quidditch,” he says, shrugging.

“Thank Merlin for Quidditch,” says Zayn.  “Don’t tell Lou I said that.”

“I’m gonna,” says Liam, smiling,  _teasing_ him.

“No you’re not,” Zayn replies, putting his finger over Liam’s mouth and kissing him on the nose.  The moment Liam’s eyes slide closed in contentment, Zayn takes advantage of it and flips them over so that he’s the one straddling Liam.  His bare skin feels so good pressed against Zayn’s; Liam feels so much  _warmer_  this way, and Zayn’s stomach does a funny little flip at how nice it feels to have the other boy’s warm hands slide around him and smooth up and down his back.  Zayn groans and rolls his hips without thinking twice, and the groan Liam lets slip when their clothed cocks press together is the unholiest sound Zayn’s ever heard come out of his mouth.

“Liam,” Zayn gasps, rutting against him again just to hear that sweet noise one more time, “Liam – can I – please–”

Liam’s hands slide lower and lower on Zayn’s back until they’re resting hotly on the dimples just above his bum.  He presses down, bringing Zayn’s hips against his, and Zayn moans and kisses him again, feeling like his blood’s on fire in the sweetest way.  When Zayn pulls off to suck a bruise into the smooth skin of Liam’s throat, their hands move simultaneously to the front of each other’s trousers, and Liam barks out a short, disbelieving laugh at how in-sync their wishes are.  Zayn undoes Liam’s trousers with one expert hand while still sucking at Liam’s throat, leaving a trail of bruises as he goes, while Liam fumbles a bit but eventually gets Zayn’s open as well.

Zayn gasps at the hot, hard feel of Liam’s cock through his pants, and he runs his hand along it lightly, making Liam moan.  Merlin, he’s so  _big_ , straining at the flimsy material covering him, and Zayn feels his mouth water a little when he grips it a bit harder and Liam gasps, thrusting upward into his hand.

“Zayn,” moans Liam, tentatively palming Zayn through his pants as well, “oh – oh god–”

“Would you let me – can I show you something?” Zayn asks, his voice pleading.  Liam nods frantically, rutting his hips up, and Zayn feels like he absolutely can’t move fast enough as he tugs both of their pants down so that they can finally feel each other, skin on skin.  He spits on his hand and wraps it around both of their cocks, forming a tight, slick circle for them both to fuck through.  He thrusts forward so that his cock slides against Liam’s, and they both groan loudly at how bloody  _good_  it feels.

Liam throws his head back and gasps out Zayn’s name, thrusting upward against him.  They’re both leaking precome at this point, making the amount of friction  _just_ right, and it still feels rough enough that Zayn finds himself hurtling to the edge much too quickly.

“Liam,” he breathes, licking at the seam of Liam’s lips, “fuck, I hope you’re close–”

“Yeah, god, I’ve been close, you –  _god_ –” Liam grits out, and he brings one of his hands down to join Zayn’s, and they stroke themselves together, and it’s getting dry and rough but it’s too good to stop, fuck, and Liam’s other hand is sliding even lower to palm at Zayn’s bare arse, squeezing tentatively and then more firmly as his confidence grows.

“Yeah, yeah, fuck,” Zayn moans, wishing he didn’t have to brace himself with his other hand so he could be exploring Liam’s body as well, but he’ll settle for Liam’s big, warm hand kneading his arse instead.  He feels like he can’t get close enough to Liam, like no matter how roughly they rut against each other it’s not  _enough,_ even as they’re speeding up, getting faster and faster, and Zayn desperately joins their lips again to try and contain some of what he’s feeling.  It’s terrifying, this all-consuming spreading  _need_  that he’s feeling – at the beginning of their relationship, he wasn’t really expecting it to go all that far, just wanted to be Liam’s first and best, set the standard for everyone else Liam would ever be with, but – but now, as he’s listening to all the choked-off moans that Liam’s trying to hold in, and as he’s looking at Liam’s eyes shut and his head thrown back in pleasure, Zayn’s realizing that he doesn’t  _want_  anyone else to see Liam like this, that – that he doesn’t  _ever_  want that, and it’s _terrifying._

“Zayn,” Liam gasps, bringing Zayn out of his thoughts, and  _Merlin_  he’s so  _close,_ “Zayn,  _Zayn–”_ and then he’s coming, gasping Zayn’s name and spurting hotly over their knuckles, slicking up their cocks with his release, and it’s so wet and perfect that Zayn can’t help but come too, attaching his mouth to Liam’s to capture the loud moan he lets out as he comes, letting his mind go blissfully blank.

As they come down, breathing heavily into each other’s mouths, Liam lets out a breathless little giggle and Zayn feels his heart clench as the thoughts he was having right before he orgasmed come roaring back into his consciousness.  He kisses Liam again to keep himself busy, to keep his own thoughts from consuming him from the inside out, and smiles into the kiss as he strokes his clean hand down Liam’s cheek.

xxx

On Friday afternoon, Zayn exits his Arithmancy class with a relieved sigh; it’s been a long week, really, and he’s excited to be able to relax tonight and maybe go into Hogsmeade tomorrow.  All that stands in between him and the weekend now is his apprenticeship with Professor Weasley, and that’s hardly a chore at all – they usually practice complicated Transfiguration spells or even attempt to create new ones, and sometimes they just sit and chat over tea about what Zayn wants to do after he graduates frrom Hogwarts.  It’s a lot of fun, actually, and Zayn really appreciates having a good relationship with such a wonderful professor.

When he gets to Hermione’s office, the door’s already open and the smell of strong, freshly-brewed tea is wafting out of the room.  He knocks softly on the open door.

“Come in, come in, Zayn!” he hears Hermione call.  He walks into her office and is unsurprised to see her sitting at her desk having tea with Professor Malfoy.  Malfoy is around a fair amount of the time, and Zayn might be suspicious of their relationship if he didn’t know how much Hermione loves her husband and, according to Louis, how much Malfoy loves his wife.

“Hello, Professors,” says Zayn politely.

“Malik,” says Malfoy, lifting his tea cup slightly.

“Have a seat, Zayn,” Hermione invites him brightly.  “Draco and I were just talking about some… some recent events that have been giving the Ministry a bit of trouble.”

Zayn sits down and pours himself a cup of tea, adding a splash of milk and two spoonfuls of sugar. Malfoy eyes his tea preparation disdainfully, reminding Zayn uncannily of Louis, who likes his tea straight (unlike his men).

“What’s going on?” Zayn asks, blowing on his tea to cool it.

“Well, it hasn’t really become a  _huge_ problem yet, but there seem to be murmurings of a new wave of Voldemort supporters wanting to ‘resurrect’ him,” says Hermione.

“They’ve asked me to join them,” Malfoy tells Zayn.  “I haven’t, obviously, but–”

“Harry wants Draco to join them as a double agent,” Hermione interrupts him impatiently.  “But the Ministry doesn’t view the – what do they call themselves?”

“Neo-Death Eaters,” says Malfoy.

“Right, none of the ‘neo-Death Eaters’ have really given any proof that they’re a major threat,” says Hermione.

“I mean, wanting to resurrect You-Know-Who kind of sounds like a threat to me,” says Zayn tentatively.

“The name, Malik, remember to use the name,” Malfoy tells him.

“Right, um, Voldemort,” Zayn manages.  “I read in the _Prophet_ that his body was stolen from his grave not too long ago, yeah?  So shouldn’t we be… _worried_ that they have it and they’re trying to resurrect it somehow?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” says Hermione.  “Now, Draco’s brought over every Dark Arts spellbook from his family’s library containing a spell intended to bring a dead body back to life, and I’ve combed the Restricted Section for other ones, and we have the lot of them right here.”  She gestures to a stack of about eight books sitting next to the teapot.  “We’ve looked at all the spells and potions, and we’re ninety-nine percent sure that all of them have one thing in common.”

She stops, then.  Bewildered, Zayn asks, “Well, what is it, then?”

“We wanted you to have a look at them as well,” says Hermione.  “Merlin knows I don’t give you enough actual work to do, so I thought today you could look over them and let us know what you find.  I don’t want to tell you what we’re thinking yet, because that could bias the way you read the books.”

“Sure,” says Zayn, feeling a bit apprehensive as the worn, leather-bound books are slid toward him. 

“I dog-eared the pages in my books so you can find them easier,” Malfoy puts in.

“You – you  _dog-eared_  a page?” asks Zayn, scandalized.  “In a book from your  _own library?”_

“That’s exactly what I said,” exclaims Hermione, throwing her hands up in vindication.

“They’re  _my books_ , you ninnies,” says Malfoy, exasperated.  “I can do what I want with them.”

Zayn shakes his head, sips on his tea – still too hot for his taste – and opens to the creased page in the first book.  The title of the page is “Regeneration Potion.”

“We read about this in History of Magic,” Zayn says absent-mindedly as he scans the page.  “Isn’t this the potion that the Death Eaters first used to restore You– I mean, Voldemort to his body?”

“It is,” Hermione confirms.  “Ron’s bloody  _rat_ –”

“Shhh,” Malfoy shushes her.  “Let the poor bloke read.”

Zayn reads through the potion’s ingredients – blood of the enemy, flesh of the servant, and bone of the father – and sets the book to the side, still open to the appropriate page.  He opens the next book to the marked page, scans through that one, and sets it aside; twenty minutes later, he’s finished all of them and has a pretty good idea of what Malfoy and Hermione have already found.

“Are you ready for me to tell you?” he asks, taking a drink from his tea now that it’s cooled to a manageable temperature.

“Go ahead,” says Malfoy, taking off his glasses and putting away the _Daily Prophet_ he’d been reading with a light sneer on his face.

“Well, besides the Regeneration Potion – and I’m pretty sure we can discount that entirely, because You-Know-Who is definitely  _dead_ , not just in a weakened state – all of the spells or potions involve the blood of a living relative,” Zayn tells them.

“Exactly,” says Malfoy, nodding firmly.

“And… You-Know-Who doesn’t have any living relatives?” Zayn guesses, asking the logical follow-upquestion.

“None,” Hermione confirms.  “He himself never married, obviously, he killed his father’s side of the family entirely, and nobody else on his mother’s side ever continued the line.”

Zayn lets out a breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding.

“Excellent,” says Malfoy, clapping his hands together.  “This means I won’t have to be a spy, thank Merlin, I have exams to write and it would’ve been a terrible inconvenience.”

Hermione rolls her eyes and then looks at Zayn fondly.  “This is great, though.  I’ll tell Ron as soon as I get home, it’ll be a load off of the Aurors’ shoulders for sure.”

“And everyone else’s,” says Zayn. 

Malfoy nods.  “More tea?”

“Sure,” says Zayn, holding out his cup.  Malfoy pours him some more tea as he and Hermione share a conspiratorial look that makes Zayn a tad nervous.

Hermione evilly waits until Zayn’s sipping at his tea to ask, “So, what’s this I hear about you and these… inter-House  _relations_  with Mr. Liam Payne?”

xxx

After he escapes Hermione and Malfoy’s awful tag-team interrogation with his dignity only  _mostly_  shattered, Zayn heads for the dungeons to ask Harry and Louis if they want to go to dinner.  Liam had told Zayn earlier in the day that he was planning on having dinner with his friend Andy; Zayn had heard enough bad things about the bloke through Louis that he’d told Liam to go on and eat without him. 

“I know he’s an arse sometimes, but he’s my friend,” Liam had said.

“That’s fine, I mean, it’s whatever, I just don’t particularly want to talk to him,” Zayn had replied. 

Liam had seemed fine with that, plus Zayn hasn’t seen much of Harry and Louis this week, so he’s really looking forward to dinner.  Luckily, someone is coming out of the Slytherin common room just as Zayn arrives at the portrait, so he’s able to slip inside without having to wait for someone to come along and let him in.  He strolls into the common room to a chorus of hellos; most of the Slytherins know him by now. 

Zayn heads upstairs to the seventh-year boys dormitories and is surprised to find Stan Lucas sitting at the top of the stairwell by the closed door wearing what look to be a pair of large, fluffy earmuffs.  He’s less surprised two seconds later when he realizes why.

“Yeah – yeah –  _oh –_ right there, babe –  _god–”_  Louis’s voice can clearly be heard through the thick  wooden door and stone walls, which is a nice indication of how loud he’s actually being.  Zayn can –  _Merlin_ , Zayn can also hear the sound of the heavy four-poster bed smacking against the wall.  Have they always been that  _loud?_

“Oh, hey Zayn,” says Stan, who’s just noticed him.  He lifts the earmuffs off of his head and winces, his ears undoubtedly trying to adjust to the noise.

“Hi,” says Zayn.  They both look at each other for a moment, trying to tune out Louis’s moans.  “Where’d you get the earmuffs?” he asks at last.

“Oh, these?  Stole ’em from Professor Sprout,” Stan says.  “She usually uses them with the second-years for the Mandrakes, but I figure one missing pair shouldn’t be a problem.  They work really well for – um, non-Mandrake things as well–”

“Like your roommates,” finishes Zayn.  “Can’t you cast  _Muffliato?”_

“It only works from the caster’s side,” Stan informs him, “believe me, I’ve tried.  If I cast it, it’s only  _them_  that can’t hear  _me,_  not the other way around, and there’s nothing that  _I’m_  doing right now that they don’t want to hear, I mean, Merlin, I’m just fucking  _sitting_  here–”

“Right,” says Zayn.  He adds that to his mental list of Spells to Create and reminds himself to inform Hermione of this oversight in spell-casting the next time they have a lesson.

“Right,” says Stan loudly, echoing him.  “I was going to invite them to dinner, but I thought I’d wait five minutes and see if they finished.”

“I was going to ask them to dinner too,” Zayn says, almost having to yell to be heard over Louis’s “Oh,  _fuck, fucking Christ!”_

“Cool,” Stan yells back.  “Do you want to go wait in the common room?”

_“God, oh my god, fuck, harder!”_

“Sounds good,” Zayn screams.  “I guess they’ll join us when they’re done.”

As they descend the stairs, they hear Louis moan, “Yeah, _fuck,_ I’m coming, m’coming,  _shit–”_ and Zayn isn’t sure whether or not to acknowledge it, but then Stan says cheerfully, “Oh, good, that means we only have to wait about five minutes.”

Some times when Zayn sees Stan he has this haunted look about him, like he’s experienced horrors the likes of which others can’t even begin to fathom, but Zayn’s never really understood it until now.

xxx

The next morning, Zayn wanders into the Great Hall for breakfast and goes to sit at the Gryffindor table with Liam.  Liam’s already sitting with Niall, whom Zayn’s gotten to know quite well and whom he absolutely adores.  He piles his plate with eggs and is just serving himself some sausage when Harry and Louis walk into the Great Hall.  Zayn waves them down frantically, hoping they’ll sit with him so he can ask them if they want to go to Hogsmeade today.  Harry and Louis head over tentatively as the Gryffindors eye them suspiciously.

“Morning,” says Louis, sitting gingerly next to Liam.  Harry squeezes in next to Louis. 

“Good morning,” says Zayn.

“Hi, lads,” Niall pipes up.  “How’s Quidditch practice going, Tomlinson?”

“As if I’d tell you,” Louis scoffs, smiling and rolling his eyes. 

“Just bein’ curious,” shrugs Niall, elbowing Zayn in the side in an effort to reach for more pudding.  “I hope you beat Hufflepuff next week, personally, just so we get another go at you.”

“You mean just so you lot get another whipping,” says Louis, waggling his eyebrows.  “Never took you for a masochist, Horan.”  Next to Louis, Harry frowns.

“Shut it,” snaps Niall.  “If fucking Andy hadn’t been in the  _bloody_  way–”

“Hey, speaking of Andy,” Zayn interjects, trying to stop a fight before it starts, “how was dinner last night, babe?”

“Oh, um,” says Liam, his brows drawing together, “it didn’t – didn’t go so well, actually.”

“Oh, right, Zayn told me you had dinner with my  _favorite_  person ever yesterday,” says Louis, nudging Liam with his elbow.

Liam frowns.  “He, um – we were actually talking about you for a bit, Louis, because we’d been talking about Quidditch, and he didn’t say anything rude about you, so I figured maybe it would be a good time to tell him I was seeing Zayn, and he didn’t – um – didn’t like that very much.”

Zayn’s blood runs cold.  “Oh, Liam–”

“He – he called me a–,” says Liam, talking over him.  “He – he just–”

 _“Liam,”_ Zayn says, again, feeling his heart break a little.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” says Liam, shaking his shoulders, and it’s a line Zayn has heard Louis use many times before but it still doesn’t make it hurt any less, “I just got up and walked out, yeah, and he called after me, said he was thinking of quitting the team ‘cause of it.”

“I hope he does,” says Niall angrily.  “Fucker’s not even that good anyway, there’s no reason to keep him around after that.”

“All he does is hit Bludgers at Louis,” says Harry. 

“Yeah, I remember that,” says Liam.  “That was awful.  Think I should just kick him off the team before he has a chance to quit?”

There are affirmative nods all around their little group, causing them to burst into laughter.  They continue to chatter happily as they eat their breakfast, spirits somewhat lifted. 

When it seems like everyone’s winding down, Zayn asks, “So, Liam and I were thinking of going into Hogsmeade today.  Do you guys want to come with?”

“Sure!” Harry says, refilling his glass of juice.

Louis frowns and Zayn mentally smacks him upside the head for what he _knows_ is coming.  “It wouldn’t be a da–”

“Nope!” Zayn says loudly, cutting Louis off.  “Niall’s coming too, right, aren’t you Niall?”

“Sure, wouldn’t miss it,” says Niall through a mouthful of food.  His chewing slows down a second later, though, and then he skeptically asks, “Wait a minute, wouldn’t that make me the fifth–”

Zayn steps on his foot  _hard_  under the table and Niall yelps, inhaling sharply and choking on whatever he was chewing.  In Niall’s ensuing struggle to force the food down his esophagus and not his windpipe, everybody seems to forget that he was about to say “fifth wheel.”  Honestly, the lengths Zayn goes to to try and help Louis and Harry’s relationship develop  _naturally_  are beginning to become absurd.  He almost just killed a bloke, for Merlin’s sake. A bloke he happens to like very much.

“Where do you guys want to go first?” Liam asks, steering the conversation elsewhere.

“Honeyduke’s,” says Harry at once, smiling dreamily.  “They have these frozen chocolate-covered bananas that I just  _love,_ but I haven’t had a chance to get any this year yet. _”_

Louis chokes on his orange juice, causing Zayn to snort violently into his sleeve and then attempt to pass it off as a sneeze.  Zayn’s seen Harry eat one of those chocolate-covered bananas before, and it’s  _obscene_  the way he does it, really.

They end up deciding to go to Honeyduke’s first, and it’s only as they’re walking down the cobbled path leading from Hogwarts to its small companion village that Zayn realizes how  _cold_  it’s actually getting.  He hasn’t actually been outside the castle for any decent length of time in a couple of weeks, and the chilly November air is seeping right through his thin peacoat.  He shivers, causing Liam to look at him with concern.

“Y’alright?” he asks, squeezing Zayn’s hand with his own.

“Just cold,” Zayn replies, trying to stop his shoulders from shaking.

“Here,” says Liam, unwinding his scarlet-and-gold Gryffindor scarf from around his own neck and wrapping it around Zayn’s.  It’s still warm from Liam’s body heat, and Zayn shivers, pleasantly this time, as warmth suffuses down his spine.  Liam makes a little noise in his throat and runs his fingers through the hair at the nape of Zayn’s neck just under the soft, bulky fabric of the scarf.

“Thanks,” Zayn says, kicking at a few dead leaves and feeling himself grin.

“Don’t mention it,” Liam replies.  “It looks good on you.”

Zayn blushes. 

“Welcome to the best House of ‘em all, mate!” Niall exclaims, looking back over his shoulder and spotting Zayn wearing Liam’s scarf.

Louis and Harry look back too, and Harry gasps.  “Zayn, how _could_ you?”

“Look, I really–” Zayn starts.

“You’ve betrayed us,” Louis moans theatrically, placing a hand over his heart.

“Fuck, who cares, just keep walking, I’m  _freezing,”_ Zayn pleads.  Liam wraps an arm around his shoulders as they continue to walk, and Zayn thinks that Liam should perhaps consider a career as a personal space heater.  He doesn’t complain about the cold at all for the rest of their walk to Hogsmeade.

They visit Honeyduke’s first.  Harry buys a dozen frozen chocolate-covered bananas with various toppings as well as a special Honeyduke’s box enchanted with a Freezing Charm to keep them from spoiling.  Louis buys a pack of Sugar Quills in what Zayn is  _pretty_ sure is retaliation; back when he and Louis were still hooking up, Louis used to tease him in classes by sucking on one.  Zayn purchases several squares of his favorite sweet, coconut ice, while Liam goes for four packs of Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum (to Louis’s hearty approval).

Niall buys a very large bag of assorted liqueur-flavored toffees, and it’s only as they’re leaving Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes an hour later laden with prank sweets and other knick-knacks that the Irish lad looks at the mostly-empty bag and announces in wonder that they’re not just liqueur- _flavored_ , but they’re actually  _filled_  with the stuff.

“Explains why they’re so tasty,” Niall slurs, pouring the rest of the candies into his mouth all at once.

“Are you… did you just get  _drunk_ on  _chocolate?”_ asks Harry incredulously.

“I’ll have what he’s having, honestly,” says Louis, clapping Niall on the back.  “Anybody up for the Three Broomsticks? I feel like I have some catching up to do.”

“This is a bad idea,” Liam says quietly as the five of them make their way over to the cheerful-looking pub.

“It’ll be alright,” says Zayn, squeezing his hand.  “We’re all of age, s’not like we’re doing anything against the law.”

“Yeah, but–” Liam cuts off and points to Niall, who’s attempting to somersault across the cobblestones. 

“He did eat the whole bag,” Zayn admits.  “The rest of us haven’t had anything, though, and Niall can hold his own.”

They squeeze through the entrance of the noisy pub and sidle up to the bar.  Tom, the ancient bartender, greets them with a friendly wave.

“Hello, lads!  Didn’t ever expect t’see the five of  _you_  out together, but y’do make a nice lookin’ group! What c’n I get for ya?”

“D’you still have any of that pumpkin Butterbeer left, or is it too late in the season?” Niall asks.

“We’ve got a few kegs left,” Tom answers him.  “I’m guessin’ you want the one with a little somethin’ extra in it, eh, Horan?”

“You know me too well!” Niall says loudly, and the two of them laugh and exchange a vigorous handshake.

“What about for the rest of y’lads?” Tom asks.

“I’ll have a pumpkin Butterbeer as well, please,” Louis says. “Spiked.  Oh, and can you add the extra foam on top like you always do?”

“Same,” says Zayn.  “Without the extra foam.”

“Same,” Liam says after a pause.

They all turn to Harry.  “D’you have any mulled wine, Tom?” he asks slowly.

The group rolls their eyes collectively and Louis actually groans out loud.

“Shut _up,”_ Harry says, smiling and knocking his shoulder into Louis’s.

“’Course we do, Styles,” says Tom.  “Pretty sure you’re the only student who drinks it, but we keep it around for the older folk like m’self.”

“See?” Harry says, as Tom hobbles off to grab the boys their drinks.  “I’m  _cultured.”_

“Now that you’ve turned seventeen, the world’s just your oyster, isn’t it?” Louis asks mockingly, his mouth twisted into a fond little grin.

“The wizarding world, at least,” Liam says.  “We still can’t drink in Muggle London, not ’til we’re eighteen.”

“Well, Confund the bartender, Liam!” Louis exclaims.  “You’re seriously telling me you haven’t done that?  That’s – I think that’s the literal first thing I did when I turned seventeen.  My first legal spell was a Confundus Charm.”

That’s so  _Louis_  that Zayn can’t help but crack up.  Tom returns bearing four Butterbeers, one with a ridiculous amount of foam on top.  He then goes over to the stove and ladles several helpings of warm, sweet mulled wine into a goblet for Harry.

“There y’are, lads!  You’ll be here for a while, yeah? Want me to open a tab?”

“Definitely,” says Niall, thanking him, and the five of them make their way over to an open table in the corner of the pub.

They sip at their drinks contentedly, savoring the tastes of fall.  Louis gets a dollop of foam on his nose from his drink and Harry giggles at him and eventually ends up licking it off, which makes Niall gag on his own Butterbeer.

“You promised I wouldn’t be a fifth wheel,” he whispers in Zayn’s ear.

“Liam and I are behaving ourselves, aren’t we, Liam?” Zayn says quietly, defensively.

“Absolutely,” says Liam.  “Mostly for your sake, Nialler.”

“Appreciate it,” says Niall, taking another gulp of his drink.

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you guys something,” says Zayn to the group at large, suddenly remembering.  “When I was with Hermione yesterday, she and Professor Malfoy were talking about some sort of ball that’s happening on Christmas Eve, and I got  _really_  confused, because Doniya, Safaa and I already have tickets to go home–”

“Oh,is _that_ happening this year?” asks Louis, putting his drink down. 

“It happens every three years,” says Liam, “so… yeah, yeah, I guess it  _is_  happening this year!”

“Your parents will understand, I’m sure they know about it already,” Harry tells Zayn, taking a sip of his wine.

“What? What’s happening?” asks Zayn, frustrated.

“The Yule Ball, o’course,” says Niall, whose speech is getting progressively harder to understand as he consumes more Butterbeer. 

“What?”

“I keep forgetting you weren’t here in the beginning of fourth year,” says Louis.  “It’s this grand dance that they hold on Christmas Eve every three years.  It apparently used to coincide with the Triwizard Tournament as sort of an inter-school celebration, but there hasn’t  _been_  a Triwizard Tournament since – well – you know–”

“I say it’s been long enough,” says Niall, waving his mug of Butterbeer around and sloshing some over the side. “I mean, You-Know-Who’s been gone for a while–”

“It’s still  _tremendously_  unsafe,” Liam argues.

“Anyway, now they hold the Yule Ball even without the tournament, and they still bring in the two other schools for, y’know, inter-magical cooperation and all that, and all of us spend Christmas hols at Hogwarts.  It’s great fun.”

“Two other schools?” Zayn asks, completely lost.

“He’s  _clueless,”_  Louis whispers loudly, at the same instant that Harry says, “Beauxbatons and Durmstrang.  One of ’em’s an all-girls school, and one of ’em only has blokes.”

“And they go to classes with us for the entire month of December,” Liam informs him.  Zayn still isn’t sure what in Merlin’s saggy pants is going on, but he figures he’ll just ask Liam later and drink his Butterbeer for now.

“I’ll fill you in later,” Liam murmurs to him like he knows what Zayn’s thinking, patting his thigh under the table.  Zayn smiles.

“Oh, speaking of Durmstrang,” Niall says, putting down his empty mug and wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve, “one of my mates who goes there – I’ve told you about Bressie, Liam, yeah – he wrote me last week and said that  _Nick Grimshaw’s_  finishing his seventh year there.”

 _“Really,”_ says Louis, leaning inward, and Zayn feels a bit like he’s in a gossip circle of tittering schoolgirls. 

“He’s been out of school for two years, though hasn’t he?  I thought he couldn’t find anywhere that would take him,” Liam says, frowning.

“Bressie said he reckons the headmaster owed Grimmy’s father a favor or summat,” says Niall, shrugging. 

This actually sounds serious.  Unfortunately, Zayn has no idea who Nick Grimshaw or Grimmy (are they the same person?) is.  “Um, sorry, still lost–”

“That happened the beginning of fourth year, too, didn’t it?” asks Harry thoughtfully.  “Looks like you took all the excitement out of Hogwarts when you got here, Zayn.”

Zayn reaches over the table to slap him and they all dissolve into laughter.

“Okay, so,” says Louis, and all five of them instinctively lean in toward each other, “when we were all in our fourth year, Nick Grimshaw was in his seventh year at Hogwarts, and he was – what was he? – right, he was in Ravenclaw, completely pretentious twat–”

“Lou,” Harry interrupts, “he wasn’t  _that_  bad.  He was always really nice to me.”

“I didn’t like him,” Louis talks over him.  “But that doesn’t matter.  What matters is that he was caught –  _by McGonagall herself –_ sucking off one of our teachers in an empty classroom.”

Zayn gasps.   _“No.”_

“Absolute yes,” Louis confirms.  “It was our Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, I think – those never seem to stick around, do they? – and he got sacked, and Nick got expelled, and it was a whole great bloody mess for Hogwarts to deal with, bad press and all.”

“I remember hearing about that,” says Zayn, “it was in the _Prophet_.  M’dad sent them to me while I was still at Sihr Madrasah.”

“Yeah, it was a massive scandal,” Liam puts in.  “At least he was of age, though, can you  _imagine_  the mess it’d have been if he was underage?”

They all shudder.

“Well, now he’s at Durmstrang,” says Niall, “so I guess that means he’ll be visiting Hogwarts when the rest of his school does.   _That’s_  going to be something to see.”

“I want, like, front-row tickets for when he sees Headmistress McGonagall for the first time,” says Louis. 

Harry bursts out laughing.  “Her  _face–”_

“Yeah, definitely don’t want to miss that,” Niall laughs.

Zayn smiles a little bit, but this still all feels like something that hasn’t quite sunk in yet.  “Wait, though, so the bottom line is, two schools’ worth of other students are getting here in December, all of us are spending the break here, and there’s going to be a massive dance?”

“Correct,” says Liam.

“Ten points to Ravenclaw, thank you, Mr. Malik,” says Louis, in a high-pitched falsetto imitation of Hermione’s voice.  Zayn flicks a balled-up napkin at him and they all laugh, then Niall gets up to grab the another round of drinks.

There’s so much to  _do,_ Zayn realizes as they leave the bar about an hour later, warm and healthily sloshed.  He has to tell his sisters, write to his parents, send home for his dress robes, have them cleaned – but even more than that, though, he’s  _excited_.  He’s going to get to spend Christmas with all of his friends this year, and it’s going to be so much fun – and something tells him that Christmas-time Liam is going to be even more adorable than regular Liam.  Oh, Zayn can’t  _wait._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit is going to start going down in the next chapter and then it's pretty much never going to stop, so hold onto your seats, ladies and gents! :)
> 
> If you have questions about the plot/think you might know where the story is headed, feel free to message me on [tumblr](http://povverbottoms.tumblr.com) but don't post anything of that sort in the comments. If you have a suggestion for what to include in the story or constructive criticism, though, comment away!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The other schools arrive, Harry has a very pleasing breakfast, and Louis gets an important letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next chapter! 
> 
> Some notes:  
> 1\. There isn't an official incantation for a Disillusionment Charm, so I chose to use the Latin word for hidden and change it up a bit, and I got _"Abscondio."_  
>  2\. I LIKE NICK GRIMSHAW A LOT. I just need to put this out there. I love him to pieces and all of the badmouthing done to him will be exclusively by Louis because he's being jealous. If you actually pay attention to his actions they aren't anything out of the ordinary and he's being very nice to Harry, which is all canon, I daresay.

The first day of December is a cold, grey Sunday that seems to be threatening snow but so far hasn’t delivered it.  The dark sky is one of the reasons why Louis wakes up so late, the other reasons being the fact that it’s a Sunday and the multiple rounds of athletic sex he’d enjoyed the night before.  He stretches like a cat, sleepy and content, and behind him Harry snuffles and pulls him closer, poking him in the bum with his morning erection.  They’re both naked underneath the warm covers.

“Good morning to you too,” Louis mumbles, his voice thick with sleep.  Harry’s only response is a light snore.

Louis grins to himself, deciding to be a bit mischievous, and wiggles around teasingly, pressing his arse more firmly against Harry’s hard cock.  Harry makes a little noise in his throat and ruts lazily against him a couple of times before falling still again.  His cock nestles between Louis’s arse cheeks and this time it’s Louis’s turn to make noise, moaning softly and feeling himself start to get hard as well.

“Harry,” he whispers, pressing back against him, “Harry, wake up.”

“Mmmnh,” grumbles Harry, lightly thrusting again and gripping Louis tighter.

Louis giggles, maneuvering one of his hands under the covers to reach back and pinch Harry’s cute little bum.  Harry comes awake with a jolt, squeezing Louis tightly and grinding against him.

“Mmm,” Harry moans again, a different timbre entirely than the last noise he made.  “Morning, Lou.”  He lets one of the hands circling Louis’s middle slide down until he’s loosely gripping Louis’s half-hard dick.  “Sleep well?”

“Yeah,” Louis breathes, feeling the muscles in his thighs clench as Harry thumbs over the head of his cock again and again until he’s fully hard.

“Sore?” Harry asks lowly, and Louis feels the hot line of Harry’s cock flush against him, feels a wet little dribble of precome stick to the dimple above his bum.

“Obviously,” Louis replies, and it’s meant to be joking – scornful _,_ even, but it comes out as more of a moan than he intended, which makes Harry laugh into his shoulder, pleased.  Harry’s other hand comes down to squeeze his balls, rolling them around in his big, hot palm.  Louis moans, arches his back and grinds against him, grinning at Harry’s sharp intake of breath.

Harry starts rolling his hips, moving and thrusting exactly as he would if he were inside Louis, and  _sure_  Louis is sore but he doesn’t think there will _ever_ be a time he’ll say no to Harry’s cock in his arse. 

“Feels good,” Harry mumbles.  He grips Louis’s cock more firmly and starts stroking up and down, twisting on the upstroke just how Louis likes.  Just when Louis is about to break down and demand that Harry fuck him, Harry bites at the soft, thin skin of his neck and then sucks,  _hard._

Louis jerks in Harry’s grip, but he’s pinned by Harry’s hands between his legs, Harry's cock nudging at his crack, and Harry’s mouth at his throat, and he finds that he can’t really move much at all.  It’s – it’s hotter than it should be, honestly,  _fuck –_  

“Harry,” Louis whines, feeling blood rising to just underneath the surface of his skin.  Harry must be leaving one hell of a mark.

After it starts to sting and almost hurt, Harry pulls off, and then actually laughs out loud.  “Holy shit, sorry, babe.”

“Hmm?” Louis asks, distracted by Harry’s very clever hand teasing just below his balls.

“Got a little carried away,” says Harry, then licks the mark he’s apparently left.

Louis doesn’t respond, too focused on Harry’s thumb pressing firm into his perineum, wishing Harry was inside him. Harry continues to thrust against his arse, and for an insane second Louis wishes that he could get _wet_ so Harry would be able to just slide right inside.

Harry’s going faster, now, and Louis feels more slick precome drip between his arse cheeks as Harry slides further in between them with every thrust.  He’s panting with exertion in Louis’s ear, his hot breath cooling the spit-wet bruise on Louis’s throat.  “Feel so good, Lou, shit–”

Louis whines, pushing back against him as much as he can, trying to angle himself so that the tip of Harry’s cock catches against his hole with each slide. 

Harry laughs breathlessly, speeding up even more.  “Wish I was inside you, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Louis tells him, too far gone to tease or be coy, just being desperately honest as he tries to get Harry inside him through sheer force of will.  “Yeah, Harry, fuck–”

“Me too,” Harry admits, moving faster and faster, “I always – fuck, _fuck–”_ and then Louis can feel him coming, rutting between Louis’s bum cheeks and creaming up Louis’s back.

Louis whines as Harry tenses up as a result of his orgasm, squeezing Louis’s cock tightly and grinding the heel of his hand into the sensitive skin behind Louis’s balls.  Louis had been getting close, but Harry’s movements are becoming sluggish and relaxed as he comes down from his high and he needs more – friction, or pressure, or  _something –_

“Harry,” he says, disliking how needy he sounds but not giving a single fuck, “Harry, please, n-need.”

Harry gives a euphoric laugh into his skin, and suddenly he’s unsticking himself from Louis’s back and crawling under the covers, pushing them off as he goes and rolling Louis onto his back.  “Wanna come on my face, Lou?”

Louis nearly chokes.  “Are you stupid?  D’you think I’d say  _no?”_

Harry laughs, then licks at the precome that’s gathered around the head of Louis’s cock.  Louis moans, watching Harry’s pretty red lips start to stretch around his tip, and he brings both his hands up to push Harry’s sweaty curls off of his face and give him some breathing room.  It’s well-intentioned, but it turns into vicious hair-pulling when Harry brings a spit-slick finger up to tease at the rim of Louis’s hole, still sore from last night.

 _“Fuck,”_ Louis breathes, trying to rock down onto Harry’s finger and rock up into Harry’s mouth.  Finding this impossible, his body starts to shake uncontrollably and he can feel his abs clench up as he gets closer and closer to the edge.  Harry moans around his cock, taking another inch into the wet warmth of his mouth, and then he presses his finger up, just barely pushing inside, but it’s –  _fuck,_ it’s more than enough –

“Mnngh, oh – _god,_ m’coming, yeah–” Louis moans, his hands tugging at Harry’s hair as Harry pulls off, stroking him through it and letting thick stripes of Louis’s come paint his face.  Louis fights to keep his eyes open the whole time even as they threaten to roll back, watching as come spurts on Harry’s eyelashes and swollen lips, some of it landing in his open mouth.  Louis’s eyes do slide closed and his head falls back when Harry squeezes at the head of his cock, wringing the last drops of come out of him and licking them up.

He opens his eyes to find Harry licking his lips, smiling dopily with his eyes still closed.  He looks – fuck, he looks as happy as a kid on Christmas morning.  A kid on Christmas morning… with come on his face.  Louis shouldn’t really do any thinking before he’s fully awake, honestly.

He swipes his hand through the come on Harry’s cheek and feeds it to him, shuddering as Harry sucks blissfully on his fingers.  “You’re obscene,” he tells Harry shakily, and Harry chuckles around his fingers.

Louis grabs for his wand and uses  _Tergeo_  for the come on Harry’s eyelids, not wanting any of it to get in his eyes.  When they’re all clean, Harry blinks and opens them, smiling at him.

“G’morning.”

Louis laughs. “It  _is_  a good morning, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s – oh, it’s December first!” Harry exclaims happily, dragging himself up the bed and laying back down next to Louis.  “The other schools come today!”

“Oh. Uh, yeah,” says Louis, trying to mimic Harry’s enthusiasm and hopefully not failing miserably.  He’d temporarily forgotten that fact. “S’gonna be great, yeah.”

“I’m so excited to see everyone,” says Harry.  “Haven’t seen most of ’em in three years, and – blimey, I can’t believe Nick’s gonna be here too!  I can’t wait to see how McGonagall reacts to him, can’t you?”

“Right,” says Louis, smiling a little despite himself at Harry’s infectious enthusiasm.  “Can’t wait, Haz.”

xxx

“Yeah, it just came out today, and it’s even faster than the Dragonflame!” says Stan excitedly.  Louis has been talking with Stan about Quidditch for almost the entire dinner, and it’s not often they get in a mood like this – but when they do, there’s no stopping them.  Harry and Eleanor are exchanging bored looks, probably wishing they were sorted into a different House or just had better, more interesting friends.

“What’s it called again?” Louis asks.

“The Fiendfyre,” says Stan, staring off into the distance longingly. 

“That’s a bit dark, innit?” asks Harry, finally contributing to the conversation. 

“It’s probably marketed to ‘destroy everything in its path,’” says Eleanor tonelessly, her face never changing from its horribly bored expression.

“Exactly!” says Stan, not noticing how unenthusiastic Eleanor is being.  “It’s brilliant!”

Suddenly, the trays of desserts in front of them vanish, along with their empty plates.  The idle chatter dies down immediately, then starts back up again at a louder volume, the students now buzzing excitedly.

At the front of the Great Hall, Headmistress McGonagall stands up and taps on her goblet.

“May I have your attention, please,” she says, and the students almost immediately fall silent.  “As you know, we have guests arriving this evening, and soon we’ll be welcoming them into the Great Hall.  I don’t believe they’ll have eaten yet, though, because they’re running a bit behind schedule, so we’d like to clear two tables for them to use for supper.  If the Slytherins and Ravenclaws could, please, intersperse yourselves amongst the Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors, we’ll be ready to welcome them shortly.”

After she sits down, the deafening sound of dozens of heavy oak benches being slid across the floor fills the cavernous room, and then the Slytherins and Ravenclaws stand up and amble over to the other side of the Hall.  Louis spots Zayn going to sit with Liam and Niall at the Gryffindor table and tugs Harry over to their group, while Stan and Eleanor go sit with Ed and the Hufflepuffs.

“Alright, Niall?” Louis asks as they sit down.  Niall has a pumpkin pasty in each hand and appears to be stress-eating them, bouncing his knees up and down and knocking them on the underside of the table.

“It’s the Veelas,” mumbles Niall through a mouthful of crumbs.  “This is gonna be the year I ask one to the ball, fuckin’ hold me to it.  I chickened out fourth year and I didn’t even know where my dick was first year, but this is the year, I can  _feel_  it.”

“I’ve never met a Veela before,” says Zayn.

“I don’t think one’s gone to Hogwarts in a while, but Beauxbatons always gets a couple every year,” Harry says.  “I have cousins who are, like, one-sixteenth Veela or something, but a lot of these girls are half or even _full_ Veela, so it gets pretty overwhelming sometimes.  The whole castle’s just randier when they’re here, honestly.”

“I’m so ready,” says Niall.  “It’s gonna be a race to snap ’em up as dates, y’know, so all I have to say is, may the best man win.”

He looks at the four of them expectantly and then seems to realize something.

“Ah, right.  Well,” and he shoves the last bits of both pasties in his mouth, “more for me, then.”

By this time, all of the students have squeezed into every bit of available space at the two long tables, leaving the two other tables free on the other side of the Hall.  McGonagall seems to be waiting for something, and it becomes abruptly apparent when the huge main doors of the Great Hall are wrenched open by none other than a sweaty, red-faced Hagrid.

“Professor McGonagall, ma’am,” he says, slightly out of breath.  “Everybody’s all set, jus’ like you asked ’em.”

“Wonderful,” says McGonagall, standing up again.  “Without further ado, I present to you the lovely ladies of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic and the fine gentlemen of Durmstrang Institute!”

Hagrid steps aside as all of the Hogwarts students crane their necks to try and get a better look.  Girls in blue robes and caps are waltzing in single-file next to an impressive line of boys wearing fur-trimmed, dark red robes.  Louis remembers, the first time he saw this, remarking to Harry about how pathetic he found Hogwarts in comparison.  Both schools certainly make a striking and unified picture, whereas Hogwarts is a motley conglomeration of all the lazy magical riff-raff the United Kingdom has to offer without anything unique to bring to the table besides really good crumpets.

Louis sees a couple people he remembers meeting back in fourth year, a few of the girls from Beauxbatons and a couple of the guys from Durmstrang. 

“Which one’s your friend?” he asks Niall. 

“The dark-haired one, near the back – right there, next to that bloke with the highlighted quiff,” Niall replies, subtly pointing.

“Oh, that’s Aiden!” Louis says cheerfully.  “I remember him, he was nice.  Actually, I think he’s –  _oh.”_

“What?” asks Harry.

“He’s Nick’s cousin.  I bet that has something to do with how he got in,” says Louis.

“Probably,” says Niall.  “Anybody spotted Nick yet?”

“Yeah, last one in,” says Harry, pointing.

They all look and, sure enough, there’s Nick Grimshaw, walking in the absolute back of the line, looking a tad out of place in his thick Scandinavian furs.  He catches a couple of people’s eyes and grins at them, looking happy to be back in his element at Hogwarts.  What a smug bastard.

The fourth through seventh years, who were attending Hogwarts when the sex scandal broke out, all seem to gradually realize just _who_ is back in their midst, and a fury of whispering begins to echo off the walls of the Great Hall until it’s a low rumble of constant noise.  The first through third years are clearly thoroughly intrigued, whipping their heads around and chattering to their housemates, trying to find out what’s going on.

At the front of the Hall, McGonagall manages to keep a straight face; Louis watches her closely and only detects one or two tiny facial tics that give away her displeasure, which is much less of a reaction than he was hoping for.

“He’s got taller,” says Harry.  Louis doesn’t dignify that with a response.

The Durmstrang students settle at what used to be the Ravenclaw table, while the girls from Beauxbatons fill in the former Slytherin table.  When everyone is seated, McGonagall raps on her goblet again, and the now twice-as-full Great Hall falls silent once again.

“Good evening, everyone, and for those of you who are not my students, welcome to Hogwarts,” she says.  “You are segregated by table at the present moment because there are still many of you who need to have supper; however, in the future, I expect you to be able to move freely from table to table for all meals.”

Plates of food appear in front of the visiting students, who gasp happily.

“After you’re done eating, the head students will show you to your new quarters.  Ladies, you can follow Ms. Edwards–” Perrie stands up and waves, her bright purple hair easily attracting attention – “and gentlemen, if you’d be so kind as to follow Mr. Malik when you’re done–” Zayn stands up and waves – “you’ll find that all of your affects have already been brought to your respective towers.  Hogwarts students, feel free to mingle as you please, but keep in mind that the curfew will be at the same hour it always is.”

“Aw, they couldn’t have extended it an hour?” asks Liam as the visiting students start digging into their suppers. 

“Like anybody follows it anyway,” says Niall.  “’Cept you, Liam, honestly.”

Louis supposes that all three schools were intended to have dinner at the same time, but because the other two were late, most of the Hogwarts students are now sitting around idly, and some have even started going up to their dormitories.  A few of the more social students have gone over to reconnect with their Beauxbatons or Durmstrang friends, but the vast majority are still awkwardly squeezed into half of the space they usually have.

“What d’you want to do, Hazza?” Louis asks, already bored.

“I want to stay, see if I can find Lou,” says Harry, peering over at the table of Beauxbatons students.

“Lou?” asks Zayn, confused.

“Not  _me_  Lou,” says Louis.  “One of the half-Veelas.  Turns out she’s friends with one of Harry’s cousins, so they bonded over that or something fourth year.”

“Lucky,” says Niall.  “The only interesting cousins I have are part wood nymph, and none of them know anybody cool ’cause all they do is wander around forests.”

“I was going to guess leprechaun,” says Louis.  Niall kicks him in the shin.  “Ow!”

Louis quickly realizes that Zayn is staying in the Hall because he has to, Liam is staying because of Zayn, and Niall and Harry are staying to look for their other friends.  He sees Eleanor and Stan get up and leave to go back to the common room and mentally curses himself out for not sitting with them instead.  Doomed to stay, Louis make idle chatter with the other four while they wait for the visiting students to finish eating.

Eventually, the same dark-haired guy that Niall had pointed out earlier comes wandering over to the Gryffindor table.  “Bressie!” Niall exclaims happily, leaping up and giving him a large hug.

“Hey, Horan,” Bressie says, smiling.  “How’re things?  How’s Quidditch?”

“Alright,” says Niall.  “We’re in the finals this year.”

“Nice!  Against who?”

“Slytherin.”

“Hope you crush ’em, honestly, mate.”

Louis clears his throat pointedly.

Bressie looks down at their table and notices the two Slytherins present.  “Oh! Sorry, didn’t mean to offend, I just – wow, you have friends in other houses, Horan, I’d never have guessed–”

“These guys are alright, trust me,” says Niall.  “This is Harry, and this is Louis.  Guys, this is Bressie, we grew up together.”

They shake hands with him.  Louis thinks Bressie looks like the kind of sturdy bloke that would have your back in a fight.  He’s also very attractive, but that’s neither here nor there.

“You still friends with Josh?  Haven’t seen him in ages,” Bressie says to Niall.

“Yeah, he’s over with the Hufflepuffs, next to that ginger bloke,” Niall tells him, pointing.

“Oh, Ed!  Forgot about him, too, good lad.  Let’s catch up later, yeah?” says Bressie, clapping Niall on the back and then wandering off.

“Is Bressie an Irish name?” asks Zayn after he’s gone.

“Oh, no, he’s called Niall, too, so we had to figure something else out,” explains Niall.

“Right,” says Zayn.  “Well, it looks like most of the guys are finished eating, and Perrie’s already leading the girls upstairs, so I’d better hop to it.” 

Louis looks around and notices that Perrie is indeed leading the Beauxbatons students out of the Hall.  Zayn gets up quickly, and the four of them follow after him like little lost ducklings.

They arrive at the Durmstrang table, and Zayn announces to them that he’s going to lead them to the North Tower, where they’ll be staying.  The four of them watch as Zayn leaves, glancing behind him every so often to make sure everyone is keeping up with him.

Nick Grimshaw is part of the last group of straggling Durmstrang students bringing up the rear, laughing about something that probably nobody else would ever find funny.  When he sees their little group of four, he stops and exclaims, “Harry Styles!”

Next to Louis, Harry straightens up a little.  “Hey, Grimmy!”

“It’s been too long,” says Nick, coming over to them and embracing Harry tightly.  “You’ve grown up quite a bit, haven’t you?”

When they pull back, Harry is blushing.  “I guess, I dunno.  I had no idea you were even back in school until I heard about it a couple weeks ago!”

“Yeah, my cousin put in a good word for me,” says Nick.  “And others, I mean, it’s all about the people you know, really.  Long story short, here I am!”

Louis rolls his eyes. 

“You coming, Nicky?” asks one of the other boys.

“I’ll catch up with you, Henry,” Nick calls after him.  Henry nods and then hurries to catch up with the rest of the group trailing after Zayn.

“I  _did_  go here for six and a half years, pretty sure I can find the North Tower,” Nick tells them, rolling his eyes slightly.  Harry giggles.  “By the way, anybody get a good look at McGonagall’s face when I came in?  I couldn’t see her well, and even if I did, wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye, honestly–”

“She was kind of twitchy,” Harry replies.  “Hid it pretty well, I think.”

“Not the entrance you were hoping for, I’m sure,” says Louis, adopting a bored expression and looking at his nails in disinterest.

Nick turns, then, seeming to see Louis for the very first time.  “Ah, Tomlinson, didn’t see you there.  Still trying to get onto the Quidditch team?”

“I’m captain, actually,” says Louis, still looking at his nails and feeling his neck flush with anger.

“Oh, that’s new,” says Nick.  “Well, I’m sure you’re excellent.  If I paid any attention to Quidditch, you know I’d be out on the pitch waving a hand-painted sign with your name on it, but I can’t follow it for the life of that me.”

“It’s not that hard,” says Louis.

“Clearly,” says Nick.  Before Louis can riddle out all the ways that’s meant to insult him, Nick turns to Harry and asks, “D’you still talk to Hagrid, Harry?  He was always one of my favorite professors here–”

“Oh, yeah, loads,” says Harry excitedly.  “I’m actually going to visit him tomorrow after classes and we’re going to see the centaurs!  Apparently one of them just had a baby.”

“Brilliant!” Nick replies, and Louis can’t tell whether or not Nick’s being serious.  Louis personally has never found centaurs all that interesting, and he’s told Harry as much.  “Male or female?”

“He didn’t say,” says Harry.  “I’ve never seen a baby fawn before, though, so I’m really excited.  D’you want to come?”

“Sure, wouldn’t miss it,” says Nick.  Harry had asked Louis this same question earlier in the day and Louis had said no.  Louis suddenly, inexplicably wishes that he’d said yes instead.  “Should I just go to Hagrid’s hut after classes end?”

“We can meet in the courtyard and walk there together, if you want,” says Harry, still smiling at the thought of the fawn.  Louis has found that he gets this cute little look on his face whenever he talks about animals.

“Sounds good to me,” says Nick.  “I’d better run, though, I don’t want to have last pick of bunks.”

“It’s probably already too late,” Louis tells him.

“A man can dream,” says Nick airily, and with that he turns and starts walking briskly away, calling goodbye to the lot of them over his shoulder.

The four of them stand there for a bit, and then make an unspoken decision to start walking back in the direction of their dormitories.  God, Louis forgot how much of a knob Nick was.  His memories hadn’t done Nick justice one bit.

“I’m glad  _some_ body wants to come see the centaurs with me,” Harry says eventually, smiling teasingly and knocking shoulders with Louis.

“I mean, I’d’ve – you know what, whatever,” says Louis.  Everything sucks.

xxx

It only takes three days for Nick Grimshaw to become an annoyingly big part of Harry’s life.  They like a lot of the same things, and the little stupid things that only Harry had ever gotten excited about are somehow now always  _extremely_ interesting to Nick as well.  Nick captivates Harry with his storytelling, too, tales of his two years off with wild nights spent in London and in parts of continental Europe, and he laughs loudly at the mind-numbingly dumb jokes that Harry likes to tell, to Harry’s great delight.

The worst part, to Louis, is that Harry now looks at another person in that bright-eyed, attentive way that until now he’d only reserved for Louis.  It’s no secret that Louis doesn’t like sharing attention, really, and that’s exactly what he’s had to do since Nick arrived.

Nick has this big group of stupid friends, too, students he’s met at Durmstrang and a group of pretty girls from Beauxbatons, and Harry slots seamlessly in with them after only several days.  Making friends has always come as naturally to Harry as breathing, and – the same really can’t be said for Louis, unfortunately, and that’s how it has always been, but _never_ has it been as painfully obvious as it is those first few days.  They all have stupid names as well, names spelled oddly or with extra letters or just plain  _weird_ (what kind of self-respecting magical parents would name their pureblood daughter _Pixie?_ Everybody knows that Cornish Pixies are menaces).

Harry eats dinner with them on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and they always sit at the far end of the Ravenclaw table and, presumably, laugh loudly at very unfunny things.  Louis doesn’t mind, not at all – why would he?  He has loads of other friends to eat dinner with.  He doesn’t like eating with Eleanor, though, because recently she’s been sending him these increasingly pitying looks like she knows something he doesn’t.  It’s getting quite annoying, actually, and he has half a mind to stop sitting with her and Stan, except all Niall does now is laugh at inside jokes with Bressie, and Louis can’t stand seeing Zayn and Liam being so couple-y and  _happy_  all the time.  Bloody inconsiderate of them, honestly.

Thursday night finds Louis sitting in the Slytherin common room working on a Potions assignment with Stan and Eleanor that’s due the next day.  The other two already have about half a foot of parchment done, but Louis is waiting for Harry, who said he’d meet them at nine to work on the essay.  It is now 9:30.

“I don’t get why you don’t just start without him,” Stan says after another ten minutes have elapsed.

“He’s my partner, and, not to brag, but he’d be absolutely lost without me.  I’m doing this out of the goodness of my heart,” replies Louis, adopting a light, joking tone to cover up the hurt that’s starting to creep into his gut.

“You two are  _partners?”_ asks Eleanor incredulously.  “Malfoy  _so_ plays favorites, it’s not even  _funny.”_

“It was alphabetical,” insists Louis.  “No favoritism at all.”

“Well, then, the  _alphabet_  plays favorites,” Eleanor grumbles.  “You get to be with Harry, meanwhile I get stuck with Helga Cornfoot.”

Louis and Stan both wince sympathetically.

“I mean, Harry’s not exactly being partner of the year right now,” comments Stan, leaning over to check and see what Eleanor’s writing.  “He’s forty-five minutes late. We’ll be finished before he shows up at this rate.”

Louis frowns, feels the hurt rise a little more prominently in his throat, and it’s now joined by a little tickle of anger just under his skin.  Louis doesn’t – Louis could write this essay in his  _sleep,_ honestly, he could’ve been done by now.  The risks and side effects of Polyjuice Potion are very well-documented and they have  _more_  than enough material with which to fill two feet of parchment.  He’d thought he was doing a good thing by waiting for Harry, but now he’s just becoming angrier and angrier the longer he waits.

Ten minutes later, Eleanor and Stan finish their essays almost simultaneously.  Stan’s just dotting the final “i” and setting down his quill with a satisfied sigh when the door to the common room flies open and Harry comes half-jogging in, his book bag slung over one shoulder.  Several other Slytherins scattered around the common room grunt in greeting. 

“Hey, hey, sorry I’m late,” he says, plopping down next to Louis on the couch, a big smile on his face that Louis wants to slap right off.  “Was with Nick, lost track of time, have you guys already started?”

Louis should’ve expected as much, but he still feels something inexplicably close to betrayal bloom sharp and sudden behind his eyelids – and the next second Stan’s ink bottle  _explodes_ , covering Stan’s freshly-completed essay in dark black ink as it cracks into several large pieces that embed themselves in the table.

All four of them jump, and Stan shouts, “Merlin’s –  _beard,_ what on earth?”

Louis is just as startled as the rest of them, and he wonders wildly if Tom Parker is hiding behind a couch somewhere just to mess with them and ruin their work.  He glances up and accidentally locks eyes with Eleanor, which he regrets immediately – her piercing, confused stare makes Louis squirm uncomfortably.  He feels pinned, trapped, even, and – she doesn’t – she doesn’t think  _he_  did that, does she?  Louis feels inexplicably guilty, even though he’s never made something like that happen before.

“Bugger, I’m going to  _murder_  whoever did that, I spent almost an hour on that!” Stan curses, trying to siphon up the spilled ink from where it’s soaking into the table. 

Eleanor looks over at Stan, and Louis is finally able to relax.  “Oh hush, Stan, you can just copy off mine.  You were doing that for the last hour, anyway, don’t think I didn’t notice.”

“You’re the best, El,” says Stan, pulling out a fresh roll of parchment and sliding over Eleanor’s very much intact ink bottle.

Louis looks over at Harry.  “Finally ready to start?”

Harry looks down at his lap.  “Yeah, yeah, sorry, Lou.”  He scoots closer and presses their sides together.  Harry feels so nice and warm against him that Louis finds, as usual, that it’s impossible to stay mad at him.

“Okay, so I was thinking we could start with the most common side effect.”

“Changing into another person?”

 _“No,_  you ninny, that’s – Jesus, that’s not a  _side_  effect, that’s the whole  _purpose_  of the potion!”

“…Oh.”

“Anyway, so a lot of people complain about nausea…”

xxx

It may be impossible to  _stay_  mad at Harry, but it’s certainly not impossible for Louis to get cross with him repeatedly and often.  At dinner Friday night, Harry sits with Louis for the first time all week, and Louis asks him what he wants to do on Saturday.

“Oh, um – Nick and them asked if I wanted to go to Hogsmeade tomorrow,” says Harry.  “I’m not doing anything tomorrow night, though, so–”

“Wait, this isn’t a Hogsmeade weekend,” Zayn interrupts him, confused.

“Nick said he knows a secret passage that leads right to the Honeyduke’s cellar,” Harry says, and he sounds so bloody  _impressed_  that Louis almost throws up.  “But let’s definitely do something tomorrow night.”

“Yes, let’s,” says Louis sourly. 

If he’s a little rougher than usual with Harry in bed that night, there’s no reason for it.

When Louis wakes up the next morning, Harry is already gone.  Fuck, Nick and his friends  _would_  be early risers, wouldn’t they.  Louis drags himself out of bed and showers quickly, throwing on a comfortable grey sweater and jeans when he’s finished.  He heads over to Zayn’s common room to see if Zayn wants to get breakfast.

“Good morning, Mr. Tomlinson,” the auror in the portrait greets him.  “Shall I go see if Master Malik is awake?”

“He told me the password, actually.  Um, dragon scales.”

The portrait swings forward and Louis steps into the gilded, lavish common room.  He climbs the stairs and lets himself into Zayn’s room without bothering to knock.

Zayn is alone in bed, the covers bunched around him.  Louis idly wonders when Liam is going to start sleeping over.

“Zayn,” he coos, stepping closer and getting right in Zayn’s face.  “Zeeeee.”

Zayn opens his eyes and startles violently when he sees how close Louis is.  “Merlin–” he tries, his voice thick with sleep.  He clears his throat and tries again.  _“Merlin,_  don’t you knock?”

“Your tongue’s been up my arse,” Louis reminds him.  “I thought we were past knocking.”

Zayn rolls his eyes but laughs despite himself.  “I assume you want to get breakfast?”

“That was the plan, yes,” Louis says.  “Liam and I were talking about maybe playing a little pick-up Quidditch game after breakfast.  You in?”

Zayn groans.  Louis knows he hates flying.  “Ugh, I’ll be a cheerleader or something,” Zayn says, rolling out of bed and going into the washroom. 

When Zayn has showered and dressed, the two of them head down to the Great Hall for breakfast.  When they arrive, Louis sees Harry sitting with Nick and his friends who are, as usual, seated at the end of the Ravenclaw table.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to sit with the Ravenclaws?” Zayn asks knowingly.  Louis realizes that he’s been digging his nails sharply into his palms, his hands clenched into obvious fists at his sides.

“Shut up,” he snaps. 

Louis gets an idea then, a  _really_  wicked one, and pulls out his wand gleefully.  At the same moment Harry glances over to the Hall’s entrance and sees Louis; he smiles and gives Louis a shy little wave.   _Oh,_ this is going to be  _fun._

Louis quickly checks to make sure nobody else besides Harry is paying him attention, then points his wand at himself and whispers,  _“Abscondio.”_   His whole body goes cold and then tingles, and judging by the shocked look on Harry’s face, Louis has indeed been successful in rendering himself invisible.

“What on  _earth?”_ Zayn whispers, bewildered.  He’s looking around wildly.

“You can’t see me, can you?”  Louis whispers back.  Zayn jumps at the sound of Louis’s voice so close to his ear.

“No, I can’t.  But what in Merlin’s name–”

“Shhh!  Go sit down with Stan.  I’ll join you guys in a mo.”

“You’re literally  _so_ weird,” Zayn grumbles, but wanders over to the Slytherin table all the same.

Harry is still staring at the spot where Louis vanished.  Louis grins to himself and starts over toward the Ravenclaw table.  As he gets closer, he starts to be able to hear their conversation.

“Yeah, my father took me with him to India when he went to study the Occamies there,” Ian’s saying.   _Of course he did._ “They’re actually really smart.”

Louis crawls under the table, careful to avoid the multiple pairs of legs in his way.

“A lot of animals are,” he hears Harry say.  “Like cats.”

“Oh, cats are just lovely,” says Nick loudly.  Louis rolls his eyes even though he’s invisible; it’s a reflex when he hears Nick’s voice at this point.  He settles himself so that he’s kneeling, at eye level with Harry’s crotch.  “People think they’re all closed off, but they can sense emotions like sadness really well.  My nan had this cat…”

Louis chooses this moment to cup Harry’s soft cock through his trousers, extremely glad that it’s the weekend and none of them have to wear their bulky uniforms. 

Harry jerks, jolting in his seat and hitting his knee on the underside of the table.  Louis chuckles to himself, gripping Harry more firmly as he feels him start to swell with the attention.

“Alright, Hazza?” asks Nick.   _That’s_ my  _nickname for him,_ fumes Louis.  He thumbs over the head of Harry’s cock mercilessly in retaliation, and Harry kicks his leg out weakly.

“Y-yeah,” says Harry shakily.  “J-just remembered my grandmum used to have a cat as – as well.”

“Older ladies love them,” Nick confirms.  “Anyway, as I was saying…”

Louis grins and brings his other hand up, pressing on Harry’s balls through the tight fabric of his trousers.  Harry kicks out again, and Louis sees his knuckles go white as he clutches at the bench for something to ground him.  Louis leans in and exhales warm over the hard line of Harry’s cock.  He got hard  _so_ quickly – then again, not much of a surprise, considering how much Harry likes to be watched.

Louis really goes at it, then, stroking over him with both hands and rhythmically pressing against him like he would if they were alone together and Harry was grinding against him.  Eventually, Harry’s hips start moving in tiny increments as he humps helplessly up into Louis’s hand, and Louis can see his nails digging into the thick oak bench.

“Y-yeah,” he hears Harry whimper.  Louis smiles fondly at how Harry really can’t hold anything in when he’s being pleasured.

“See? Harry agrees with me,” Nick says, and Louis almost laughs out loud.  “They really  _do_  wear too much perfume, honestly, it’s like a cloud of pollution…”

Louis brings one of his hands down away from Harry’s cock, wriggling two of his fingers in between his bum and the oak bench so he can prod at Harry’s hole through his trousers.  Harry’s hands fly off the bench and hit the underside of the table, then clench into tight fists as he balls them up to rest on his thighs.  Harry’s hips are still moving, and he’s edging a little closer to the front of the bench so that Louis has better access to his bum.  Good lad.

Louis grinds the heel of his hand against the base of Harry’s cock, making Harry kick out again, and then uses to fingers to pinch and thumb at the swollen head of his cock, easy to find even through his trousers due to how hard he is.  His other hand is pushing in over and over against Harry’s hole, and Louis shudders at the knowledge that only a few layers of fabric separate him from fingering Harry in  _public._

After another minute, Harry starts to twitch like he does when he’s close, and he frantically unclenches one of his hands to grope blindly around for Louis, presumably trying to tell him to stop.  Louis has no such plans, however; he has kind of a bleak, boring Saturday awaiting him and making Harry come right in his trousers is going to make it much, much better.

Harry’s hand finds his face, then, and he tugs on Louis’s fringe a little to try and warn him.  Instead of paying any attention to him, Louis turns his head and takes two of Harry’s fingers into his mouth, sucking wetly on them and licking in between them, and then Harry jerks wildly and groans, his legs straightening out as his muscles spasm, and Louis can actually  _see_  his cock twitch in his trousers as he comes,  _fuck._

“You okay, Harry?” asks Ian.

“S-Stomachache,” Harry gets out after a minute, breathing hard.

“I knew those eggs looked suspicious,” Nick declares.  “You still good to come with us today?”

“Y-yeah, just give me a minute,” says Harry.  Louis takes his wand out, then, pressing it between his arms so it isn’t seen, and whispers, _“Scourgify,”_ while he points it at the wet spot forming near the zip.He wanted to make Harry come in his pants, but he doesn’t want Harry to have to walk around with those same pants and trousers on all day. He’s not  _that_  cruel.

Before Nick and all of his friends start getting up from the table, Louis quickly crawls out, taking care not to knock anybody’s feet on the way out.  He stands up, satisfied that he’s still invisible because no one’s gaping at him for having just crawled out from under a table, and exits the Great Hall, ducking behind a tapestry and whispering,  _“Finite Incantatem.”_

He can see his arm again, so he’s reasonably certain the rest of his body is back as wall.  Louis strolls back in just as Nick and company are walking out, Harry in tow. 

“Lovely morning!” Louis chirps at them, winking at Harry.  Harry’s face flames, the flush disappearing down the collar of his shirt, but he smiles breathlessly back at Louis.

By the time Louis sits down with Zayn and Stan, there’s only five minute remaining until the breakfast food is scheduled to disappear from the table.  He hurriedly piles his plate with several scones, pouring himself a glass of pumpkin juice as well.

Zayn leans over and whispers in his ear, “Any particular reason why Harry looked like he came in his pants earlier?”

“Was it obvious?” Louis whispers back.

“I mean,” says Zayn, “only to someone who’s seen his o-face before.  He was pretty subtle.”

“Good lad,” says Louis, and that’s all they have to say on the subject.

After Louis has virtually inhaled three scones, Liam and Niall come over from the Gryffindor table.  “You still on for Quidditch?” Niall asks them.

“Like we’d back out,” says Stan.  He stands up and Niall claps him on the back.

“I’ll be out in a minute, I just have to finish my juice and make sure I don’t throw up from speed-eating,” Louis tells them.

“See you out there, then,” says Liam.  “You coming, love?”

“I’ll come out with Louis,” Zayn tells him.  “I’m not going to play, anyway.”

“I’ll convince you one day,” Liam says, leaning down to peck him on the lips.

“Gross,” Niall complains.  “Affection.  Disgusting.”

Liam pulls back, laughing, and the three of them walk out of the Great Hall to go down to the Quidditch pitch.  Louis drains the last of his pumpkin juice and sits for a minute to let everything digest, hoping the dense, doughy scones don’t come abruptly back up when he’s airborne.

He and Zayn are just about to leave when a loud screech echoes around the Great Hall, and everyone still present looks above their heads to see a big barn owl flying in with a letter clutched in its beak.  Oddly enough, it flies toward Louis and Zayn, who are the only two students still sitting at the Slytherin table.  It drops the letter without even landing, turning around midair and flying back the way it came, and the letter crashes to a halt in a bowl of porridge, splattering some into Zayn’s hair.

Zayn jumps and swears.  “Buggering bloody–”

As he takes his wand out to clean himself off, Louis extracts the envelope from the porridge and wipes it off with a napkin.  It’s addressed to him, oddly, but that wasn’t the owl he uses to communicate with his family.

Louis opens the envelope and takes out a thick piece of parchment with an official-looking seal on top.

“That’s a St. Mungo’s seal!” Zayn exclaims, now porridge-free.  Oh, right, Zayn’s dad works there.

Louis reads the body of the letter.

_To: Louis William Tomlinson, D.O.B. 24/12/91_

_Dear Mr. Tomlinson,_

_Early this morning, a group of three men breached the extensive security measures we have in place and stole the medical records for every magical person born in the month of December, 1991.  Your file was among these, and we are writing to inform you that some of your personal information has been compromised. We are working closely and meticulously with the Ministry of Magic to ensure the perpetrators are caught and brought to full justice, but until then, your identity is at risk.  For this reason, you need to obtain a new Wizarding Identification Number (WIN), different than the one listed on your stolen record.  You can do so by contacting the St. Mungo’s Medical Records Department by Floo.  Our lines are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for your convenience.  Any other questions can be directed here as well.  Again, we are terribly sorry for the incident and we are working as quickly as we can to restore your information to its former utmost security._

_Signed,_

_Mafalda Hopkirk, Senior Undersecretary to the Head of Hospital, St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries_

Louis reads the letter two more times and then hands it to Zayn, too stunned to even begin to summarize it.  Louis watches him with concerned eyes and, after he’s seen Zayn read it, says, “I didn’t even know I had a file in St. Mungo’s.  I’ve never been there before in my life.” 

“Well, everyone does,” Zayn scoffs.  “Everybody with at least one–”

He cuts off, then, and his mouth falls open. 

“What? What is it?” asks Louis frantically.

Zayn gapes at him like a fish out of water.  Finally, he croaks out, “Everybody… with at least one magical parent.”

xxx

“Zayn.  Zayn.  Zayn.”

It’s all Louis has been able to say for the past five minutes, in a state of absolute shock as they hurry up to the Head’s Tower.  Zayn apparently has special access to Floo powder that they can use to travel to the hospital itself.

“I know, Lou, I know, holy shit,” says Zayn excitedly. 

In Zayn’s common room, they each grab handfuls of Floo powder.

“Wait!” Zayn exclaims suddenly.  “We have to tell the others where we’re going.”

He takes out his wand and says,  _“Expecto Patronum!”_

A sleek, silvery hawk bursts from the tip of his wand, turning gracefully in midair and awaiting Zayn’s instruction.  “Had to take Lou to the hospital. Nothing’s wrong. Explain later,” Zayn tells it, then closes his eyes and waves his wand in a circle.  The Patronus takes off in the direction of the Quidditch pitch.

“That was sick,” says Louis, momentarily forgetting that  _I’m a half-blood holy shit did Mum know what’s even going on –_

“It is pretty useful,” agrees Zayn.

They each throw a hasty handful of Floo powder into the fire, making it flare up brilliant green.

“St. Mungo’s,” Zayn says clearly, and then disappears up the chimney.  Louis does the exact same thing, and several unpleasant seconds later (during which he  _really_  regrets eating that last scone) he finds himself thrown out onto a sooty rug in the lobby of St. Mungo’s. 

It’s not as clinical or drab white as he was expecting; it’s full of warm, neutral colors, and the ceilings are high, in stark contrast to the stuffy Muggle hospital his mum works at.

“Welcome to St. Mungo’s!” a concierge says, walking up to him and Zayn as they dust themselves off.  “How can I help you gentlemen?”

“Um – d’you know where the Medical Records department is?  We need to go there,” Louis tells her.

“It’s on this floor – just go down that long hallway there, and go through the last doorway on your left,” she replies.

“Thank you,” says Zayn, and he and Louis take off as fast as they can without running outright. 

When they finally reach the door to Medical Records, they find that it’s already open, and an absolutely chaotic scene greets them.  Important-looking people are bustling everywhere, several Aurors from the Ministry of Magic are talking with a frazzled-looking Healer while an enchanted quill transcribes their conversation, and the five fireplaces lining the wall to their right are all glowing bright green as staff members take angry Floo call after angry Floo call from people who, like Louis, have had their medical records stolen.

“Um,” says Louis, trying to find somebody who looks both helpful and not about to collapse.  He settles on a middle-aged witch wearing a Healer’s uniform pouring herself some coffee in the corner.  “Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but my–”

“Records were stolen, I know,” she says, turning around.  She has kind eyes that remind Louis of Harry’s a bit, and soft-looking blonde hair.  “We’re doing everything we can, sweetheart, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s not – well, it  _is_  that, but I was wondering–” Louis looks at Zayn for help.  He literally can’t even comprehend that so big a piece of his past has been missing his entire life.

“You have extra copies of all the records, right?” Zayn cuts in smoothly, and Louis smiles at him gratefully.

“Yes,” the Healer says, looking at them curiously.  Her name tag says “Renee.” 

“I, um–” Louis stammers, suddenly looking at the ground, embarrassed.  He scoots a little closer to her.  “I was wondering if I could have a look at mine?  I don’t, um – I never knew who my father was, and–” he cuts off again, not trusting himself to speak anymore.  He really wishes his mum was here.

Renee’s eyes soften.  “Oh, sweetheart. Yes, we do keep extra copies.  Do you have the letter we sent you?”

Louis pulls it out of his robes and hands it to her.  She reads it over, scanning it with her wand to make sure it’s the original, and nods.  “Alright, Louis, I can take you there now, if you’d like.  Would you rather your friend wait here?”

“No, he should come too,” Louis says, grabbing Zayn’s hand for reassurance.  He  _really_  shouldn’t have had that last scone. 

“Okay, we’re going down to the basement, then.  Follow me.”

She leads them back out into the hallway, probably grateful for a chance to get out of the hectic office, and walks them toward an elevator bank.  A couple of doctors in light grey robes pass them by, and one of them says, “Morning, Zayn,” in passing.

“Oh, good morning, Dr. Mallard!” says Zayn. 

“Do you have a relative that works here?” Renee asks Zayn, probably just to make conversation as they wait for the elevator.

“Yeah, uh, Dr. Malik.”

“Oh, I  _thought_ you looked familiar,” says Renee.  The elevator door dings open and they step inside.  “I report to him a lot, and he has a picture of you on his desk.”

Louis feels like throwing up.  He wonders if his unknown magical father somehow, somewhere, has a picture of him on  _his_ desk.

In the basement, they take a series of twists and turns until they get to an imposing-looking door.  A scanner emerges from the wall, and Renee places her wand inside it.

“We have security guarding our main office day and night,” she explains, “but our archives only open to certain wands.”

The lights inside the room magically switch on when they enter, and they’re presented with a stunning view of shelves almost as far as they can see stuffed full of dusty manila folders.

“Just to make sure – how did I get a file here again?” Louis asks.

“Any child born with at least one magical parent has a file magically created at birth using a locating spell one of our doctors created,” Renee explains.  “Muggleborn witches and wizards don’t exhibit their magical powers until a slightly later age, and by that time our locating spell has worn off, so they don’t have a file created unless they come into St. Mungo’s for a specific ailment.”

“And I’ve never been here before,” says Louis softly.  Renee puts a hand on his shoulder, and it’s nice, comforting, even, but he feels his throat close up with how much he wants his mother’s touch.

“Ready, Louis?” she asks, holding up her wand.

“I guess,” says Louis.  Zayn takes his hand again, squeezing lightly.

“Louis William Tomlinson,” Renee intones, reading off of the letter and holding her wand up in the air.  “Date of birth twenty-four, twelve, ninety-one.”

There’s a rustling noise somewhere in the middle of the room, and then a dusty folder zooms out of the shelves and into Renee’s outstretched hand.

“Here it is,” says Renee, handing it to Louis.  “I’ll be waiting by the door if you need anything, sweetheart.”

“Thanks,” Louis tells her, voice thick.  He squeezes Zayn’s hand again and then lets go, using both hands to shakily open the folder.  His heart leaps into his throat.

Inside is his birth certificate, but not the one he’s seen before.  His Muggle birth certificate doesn’t list a father, but the apparently omniscient wizarding birth certificate does:  _Edward Austin._

“Edward Austin,” Louis repeats softly.  Is he called Ed?  Does he have other children?  Where is he?  What’s he like?  Why did – why did he leave Louis’s mum when she got pregnant?

“Edward Austin,” he says again.  “D’you know anyone with that last name, Zayn?”

“Nobody,” says Zayn softly.

Louis frowns.  He turns to Renee and asks, ““Is there a – is there a way to check for other files in here?”

She looks back at him, then understands.  “Oh, for your father, love? Sure, although there’s less information to go on.  Let’s see, what’s the name?”

“Edward Austin.”

She holds her wand up and says, “Edward Austin, all files.”

Nothing happens.

“Edward Austin, all files.”

Again, nothing happens.

“What does that mean?” Louis asks frantically.  “Is it – is he a Muggle after all? Is this all a–”

“No, Lou, your file’s here, he’s… he’s not a Muggle,” Zayn says softly.  He’s looking at Louis and his eyes are sadder than Louis’s ever seen them, and Louis doesn’t like it  _at all._

“What’s it mean, then? What’s wrong?”

“Louis,” says Renee, gently, “our locating spell also… vanishes the files, when–”

“When what?” Louis asks, interrupting her quickly.  He has a terrible idea of where this is going and he doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want the rug ripped out from under his feet just after it’s been put there, no,  _no -_

“-when a person passes away.”

xxx

Louis spends the rest of the day in Zayn’s bed crying.  After they get back from the hospital, Zayn sends another Patronus to Liam, Stan, and Niall, telling them that he and Louis are going to be spending the day together and to please not worry.  Zayn cuddles Louis all day, letting him nap intermittently and then holding him tightly when he wakes up crying again.

Louis isn’t even sure why he’s so upset, honestly – he never even knew his father, and he’d always resented him very much for leaving his mum when she was still pregnant.  It’s just – he’d had something to  _go_  on, finally, a chance to finally meet the person who had eluded him his entire life, and – in the short time between learning he had a magical father and learning his father was deceased, he’d started to picture it in his head, their reunion, pictured meeting a man with a face like his and asking him an endless stream of questions about magic and love and Louis’s purpose in life.  He’d started to picture his father as someone who held the answers to all the questions he’d ever asked, but as soon as Louis had started to form that mental attachment, it was torn quickly and brutally away from him.

They skip dinner, too, sleeping right through it together, and it’s only when Louis starts to feel numb and gross from crying that he decides to go back to his own room and clean himself up.  Zayn leaves him with a big hug and a promise to eat breakfast with him tomorrow.

“Could you – could you not tell anybody, please?” asks Louis, voice hoarse from crying.  “Not even Liam.  Not yet.”

“Of course.”

When Louis gets back to his common room, he finds Harry getting ready for bed.  He’d – he’d forgotten, what with everything else going on – Harry had ditched him all day –

“Hey, Lou,” says Harry, turning to him and smiling.  “I missed you at dinner.  How was your day?”

Louis laughs hysterically, feeling grief and anger bubble up inside him in equal measure.  _“Well,_ Harry, I don’t know, I’d say it was decent, actually.  I got a letter from St. Mungo’s telling me my medical records had been stolen–”

Harry gasps, apparently aware of the connotations.  “But that means – you have a – your dad’s a–”

“A wizard, yeah,  _great_ , isn’t it,” Louis continues, his voice rising in pitch and volume.  “So Zayn and I went to St. Mungo’s to see who it was–”

“You know? Lou, that’s great, you can finally–”

“He’s  _dead,”_ Louis shouts brokenly, and Harry flinches back, his eyes wide.  “He’s a wizard and he’s fucking  _dead_  and I’ll  _never_  know him, okay, and I – fuck–” he cuts off, choking back a sob. 

“Louis–” Harry says, starting forward with his arms wide.

“Don’t touch me,” Louis snaps, dodging his hug.  “I wouldn’t even expect you to care, after you spent the whole day with  _Nick–”_

“Lou–” says Harry, starting to tear up too.  “You know I would’ve – if you’d told me, I would’ve–”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t,” shouts Louis, tears running down his face, “okay, I fucking didn’t, because you  _weren’t there,_  so you can just  _fuck off_ and stop pretending to care.”

He doesn’t even look at Harry, too upset and angry to even lift his head, and he stalks over to his own four-poster bed.  This entire year, he’s never  _once_  slept there, but – this is a day for firsts, apparently, his first trip to St. Mungo’s and his first time reading his father’s name and his first time letting Zayn see him cry.

Louis flings himself onto his bed, drawing the curtains and continuing to sob, and it’s cold and unwelcoming and doesn’t smell like Harry, but at least it won’t abandon him.  Louis quiets, eventually, but he doesn’t fall asleep for a long time,  _can’t_  fall asleep listening to Harry cry softly too, over in his own bed.

xxx

Louis wakes up in the middle of the night crying again, and this time Zayn isn’t there to squeeze him and nuzzle into his neck, and he’s not next to Harry like he usually is, his bed is just –  _empty._

He lays there for a while, unable to fall back asleep after he’s stopped crying.  He eventually caves, getting out of his foreign, uncomfortable bed and padding over to Harry’s.

He pulls back to the curtain to find Harry asleep on top of the sheets with all of his clothes on, like exhaustion took him too quickly for him to actually prepare for bed.  He’s curled up with his cat, Dusty, who normally likes to prowl around the castle looking for mice at night but tonight has chosen to nestle herself under Harry’s chin, her chest softly rising and falling with Harry’s.

 _“They can sense emotions like sadness really well,”_ Nick Grimshaw’s voice blares absurdly in Louis’s head.  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Louis sighs and climbs into bed with Harry, nudging him over slightly so that Louis can be the big spoon, and draws the curtains tightly around then, cocooning the bed in darkness.  Harry snuffles and stretches a bit, and neither of them say anything, but both of them sleep much better after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked it and want to be the first to know when I update, follow me on [tumblr](http://povverbottoms.tumblr.com)!
> 
> I am now opening character asks on there as well for this story. :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zayn goes to the Hospital Wing, Liam asks an important question, and secrets come out at a Ravenclaw party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the new chapter!! I hope you guys like it. :)

The Sunday after Louis finds out the news about his father, Zayn wakes up to discover a deep layer of snow blanketing the entire castle and the surrounding forest, pure white as far as the eye can see.  It snows through Monday and Tuesday as well, fat flakes falling densely and coating his eyelashes whenever he has to walk out to the greenhouses for Herbology.  Unlike Liam and Niall, who like to spend every spare moment playing outside and making snow angels, Zayn doesn’t spend any more time outside than he has to.  He much prefers curling up by the fire in his common room with a nice book and sometimes Perrie or Liam for company, watching the snow fall outside but not experiencing its chill.

On Wednesday, the snow stops, but the  _cold_  sets in, then, and before long the snow is frozen and crunchy on top and even Niall and Liam don’t go outside unless they absolutely have to.  The castle is chilly, especially the dungeons, and even Professor Malfoy’s strongest Warming Charm doesn’t quite cut the cold that seeps through Zayn’s robes.  Luckily, at least in Potions, he has his boyfriend to keep him warm (as well as the fire underneath his cauldron, but Liam is much more pleasant).

That night, Zayn and Liam hunker down in Zayn’s common room to study for the next day’s Muggle Studies exam with Perrie, Jade, Leigh, and Jesy.  They actually get a surprising amount of work done considering how talkative and easily distracted their little group usually is, but in a couple of hours they cover all of the required material and their focus gradually dissolves when Jesy breaks out a bottle of Firewhiskey.

Liam frowns.  “I don’t want to take a test hungover.”

“We’re not going to get pissed, keep your pants on,” says Jesy, rolling her eyes, “I’m just taking a shot or two to see if it’ll help to feel my toes again.”

After they each take a shot (“To passing this exam!”) and are more relaxed, Zayn snuggles into Liam’s side and Jade asks, “Are you all coming to the party on Saturday?”

“Ravenclaw’s hosting, right?” asks Leigh.

Zayn and Jade nod.

“I’m excited to see if Nick is as good of a DJ as he says he is,” says Perrie, grabbing a blanket off of one of the couches and curling up under it.

“I’m still sulking about that,” mutters Zayn.   _He’s_  usually the one who plays DJ at Ravenclaw’s parties, but Nick Grimshaw had captivated everyone with his tales of meeting and befriending several London radio DJs (both wizarding and Muggle) and learning their tricks, and Danny, the traitor, had suggested that Nick be their guest DJ, as a tribute to his glory days.  Or something. 

“I mean, it’ll be something different,” says Liam, squeezing Zayn’s shoulder.  “Plus, I get you to myself the whole party, right?”

Zayn blushes and Jesy makes a gagging noise.  “Christ, Zayn, I might actually miss the times when you ignored us every day and just went straight upstairs to fuck Harry and Louis.  This cute stuff is making me ill.”

“I miss ’em too,” says Leigh, stretching her arms over her head.  “I don’t know if you’re just not as good or if you’re gagging ’im or what, Li, but Zayn isn’t nearly as loud as he used to be.”

Liam hides his face in Zayn’s shoulder as the girls break into giggles.  “Perrie, control your friends!  They’re worse than a pack of rabid Doxies,” Zayn says indignantly.

“Sorry, sorry,” says Perrie, completely ruining her sincerity by continuing to laugh.

Zayn wants to tell them that the reason he’s quieter is because there’s a lot more  _kissing_  going on than there was with Harry and Louis, but he feels like that would just produce more retching noises from Perrie and her friends.  He keeps that information to himself, then, but it makes him smile at the carpet even as the girls continue to cackle.

xxx

The next afternoon in Potions class, Professor Malfoy announces that they’re going to be brewing the Wide-Eye Potion.  “It’s also called the Awakening Potion.  I chose it in honor of the upcoming exams that are most _definitely_ going to screw up your sleep schedules.  If you brew it correctly, I’ll even let you take some back to your dormitories, because I’m just that nice.”

It’s a mad rush to the Potions cabinet to gather their ingredients, seeing as everybody wants to get first pick and find the best quality ingredients in the hopes of actually brewing the potion correctly,  _especially_ after the grueling morning some of them had with their Muggle Studies exam.  Liam and Zayn have developed a system by now – well, it’s not really a system so much as an unspoken agreement that Liam grabs the ingredients on the higher shelves and Zayn collects the ingredients from the lower shelves. 

Today, Zayn takes Boomslang fangs and two sprigs of Wolfsbane and returns to their bench, leaving Liam to grab the dried Billywig stings from the highest shelf.  Zayn’s intrigued, because they’ve never worked with Billywig stings up to this point.  Louis has, in his private lessons with Professor Malfoy, and he’s told Zayn that sometimes he pricks himself with the stingers on purpose because it produces a giddy sort of rush.  Sounds a bit like a drug to Zayn, but he’s considering “accidentally” poking himself with one just to see what happens.

Once everyone settles back at their benches and begins to light fires under their cauldrons, Professor Malfoy speaks up again.  “Now, for most of you, this is probably the first time you’ll be working with Billywig stings.  This is partially because of their addictive nature, leading to their semi-Controlled classification by the Ministry of Magic…”

Zayn opens their vial of Billywig stings and examines one, ignoring the disapproving look his boyfriend gives him.  He’s not going to do anything, really, just wants to look at it.  It tapers down to a sharp point and is a brilliant turquoise in color, and as he carefully runs one finger down the length of it, he feels a warm, tingling sensation prickle in the tip of his finger and then start to spread quickly up his hand and then his arm.

“…and also because of the rare but powerful allergic reaction that some are known to experience upon contact with the stingers, which requires immediate–”

“Help,” says Zayn loudly.  The tingling sensation has spread throughout his entire body, and although it’s a very nice feeling, he’s now beginning to float several inches off of the floor, his bum losing contact with his chair.

“–medical attention, as Mr. Malik has so kindly just demonstrated.  Payne, do me a favor and take him to the hospital wing, and keep a firm grip on him when you’re in the corridors, else we might not ever see him again.”

“Yes, Professor,” Liam stammers, scrambling up and catching hold of a corner of Zayn’s robes.  Zayn is now in imminent danger of hitting his head on the dingy, never-used chandelier hanging from the stone dungeon’s ceiling.

“Zayn, tell Madam Pomfrey you’re allergic to Billywig stings, she’ll know what to do,” Malfoy says as Liam guides Zayn to the door.  “Oh, and don’t _ever_  eat Fizzing Whizbees.  You’d probably shoot into the sky like a firework.”

“Thanks, Professor,” Zayn says weakly.  Liam tugs him down a bit so he doesn’t hit his head on the top of the doorframe on the way out.

“If anybody else is allergic to Billywigs, please let me know now,” he can hear Malfoy saying as Liam pulls him down the hall.  “Otherwise, you can open your books to page three hundred and ninety-four…”

“So, can you fly, or can you just hover?” Liam asks him as they walk down the hall.

Zayn flails around a little bit.  His limbs meet no resistance in the air at all.  “I think I can just float.  Like, if you let go of me now, I wouldn’t have any control of where I’d go.”

Liam’s other hand comes up to wrap around his calf, squeezing him tightly.  Zayn smiles.

When they get to the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey takes one look at Zayn and places her hand over her heart.  _“Godric,_ Zayn, what’s happened to you?”

“I’m – um – apparently I’m allergic to Billywig stings,” Zayn tells her. 

“I should say so,” Madam Pomfrey replies.  “Here, Liam, help me get him over to a bed, your arms must be getting tired.”

Liam drags Zayn over, seemingly unaffected by Zayn’s useless flailing as he does so, and together Liam and Madam Pomfrey wrestle Zayn down until he’s floating horizontally just over one of the white hospital beds.  “Hold him there, if you can,” instructs Madam Pomfrey, and then she lets go to bring up thick, padded straps that must be attached to the underside of the bed.  With a flick of her wand, the straps bind themselves and secure Zayn’s chest and legs to the bed, preventing him from floating upward. It’s still uncomfortable, though, because Zayn can feel his body straining to float upward, and even though the straps are padded they still end up digging into him as his body fights to get free.

“I’m going to go whip up the antidote,” Madam Pomfrey tells them.  “You can go, if you’d like, Liam.”

“Is it alright if I stay?” Liam asks. 

Madam Pomfrey gives the two of them a small little smile, and it looks nice on her normally severe face.  “Sure you can, dear.”

While she goes off to prepare the antidote, Liam strokes Zayn’s hair off of his face.  “D’you feel okay otherwise, love?”

“Yeah, m’fine,” Zayn tells him.  He goes to join his hand with Liam’s, but discovers that his arms had ended up being restrained as well when the strap fastened over his chest.  Zayn takes in a large gulp of air, trying to quell the very inconvenient reflex he has of getting hard whenever he’s tied up.  He didn’t – he didn’t used to be like this, really; he blames Harry and Louis.

“That’s good,” says Liam, oblivious.  “We should be out of here in no time, then.”  He brings his other hand up to pat Zayn on the thigh, and Zayn gulps again at how close Liam’s hand is to his crotch.

“Babe, um – that’s not such a good idea, now,” he whispers, hoping Liam understands.

“What isn’t?” Liam asks, continuing to rub circles into Zayn’s upper thigh in what he probably assumes is a soothing manner.  Zayn makes a little sound in his throat, and only then does Liam seem to realize that Zayn is getting hard.

“Oh–” he stammers, blushing and slowly drawing his hand away.  “I didn’t know you – um–”

Madam Pomfrey chooses that moment to return with a large bottle of bright blue potion and several smaller, clear glass vials with stoppers.  Zayn is only half-hard, but his face is still burning with an involuntary blush; the nurse just arches an eyebrow, though, and Zayn is reminded that she’s probably seen it all.

“So, Zayn,” she says, pulling up a chair to sit next to his bed, “you’re going to need to take a dose of this every five hours for the next week.  This is going to keep you on the ground, literally, so it’s very important that you never miss a dose.  I know it will be difficult at night to wake up at the proper time and take it, so I don’t know if you want to have someone else wake you up–” her eyes dart to Liam for a split second– “or just set an alarm, but do what you have to.  I know it’s annoying, but it’s very dangerous business missing doses, and if you miss one at night you might wake up plastered to the Great Hall ceiling or, worse, free-floating above the castle.”

Zayn gulps.  “Got it.”

Madam Pomfrey holds up the small glass vials.  “You can fill these at the beginning of each day to carry around with you if you don’t want to lug around this bottle all day.  Each one is a dose.”  She pours out a measure of the blue potion onto a large spoon and holds it up to Zayn’s mouth.  “Of course, if you’d prefer to carry the bottle, each dose is three tablespoons.”

Zayn opens his mouth and accepts the spoon, swallowing the potion and noting pleasantly that it’s not horrible.  It’s very tart, a bit like lemons, but it’s loads better than many of the medicines he’s had to take.

“Now, one last thing – while you’re taking it, certain other foods might interact with it and negate the effects of the antidote, so you’re going to need to stay away from alcohol and cinnamon while you’re taking the antidote,  _especially_  that cinnamon brandy that you Ravenclaws seem to be fond of.”

Zayn groans before he can stop himself – not only is Nick replacing him as DJ this weekend, but now he has to sit through the damn party  _sober._

“Oh, hush,” Madam Pomfrey scolds him, replacing the cap on the bottle of antidote.  “You should be able to go without alcohol for a week, honestly, and if you aren’t, there’s an entirely different talk we should be having.”

Zayn laughs a little.  “No, I’m fine, sorry.”

“I’m sure he was just disappointed about not being able to eat cinnamon,” says Liam, a smile quirking at his lips.  “He’s very fond of the blackberry cobbler the House Elves make for dinner.”

“Oh, I’m  _sure_  that’s what he’s upset about,” Madam Pomfrey replies drily.  “Now, how do you feel, Zayn?”

Zayn had been distracted by the prospect of a week without alcohol, but now that he’s taking stock of himself, he doesn’t feel like he’s straining to get free of the straps anymore.  “Less floaty.”

“That’s the goal,” says Madam Pomfrey.  She tentatively undoes the straps binding his legs, and Zayn notes with relief that his legs stay comfortably resting on the bed.  “Excellent.  You’re all set.  Any questions before I let you go?”

Zayn shakes his head.  Liam asks, “How are we supposed to know all of the foods that have cinnamon in them, though?”  That’s a good question.  Zayn hadn’t thought of that.

“I’ll have one of the kitchen elves give you a list,” says Madam Pomfrey. 

After Zayn and Liam leave the Hospital Wing laden down with a week’s worth of antidote, they decide to head up to Zayn’s room and drop the potion off before they go to lunch.

“Pity we don’t get to make that Awakening Potion,” says Liam, wrapping an arm around Zayn’s shoulder. 

“I’m allergic to it anyway, apparently,” Zayn grumbles.

“Aw, it’s okay, there’s always tea,” Liam tells him, squeezing his shoulders.  “Loads and loads of tea.  And study breaks, you know, to keep our minds sharp.”

“Right,” says Zayn, smirking.  “Study breaks are very important.”  He leans his head into Liam’s shoulder and smirks, thinking of the many distracting ways they can spend their breaks, almost all of which involve an orgasm.  To keep the mind sharp.  Or something.

xxx

The next day, after classes are over, Zayn heads over to Hermione’s office for their weekly lesson.  He has to remember to ask her about tweaking the  _Muffliato_  spell to allow it to go both ways; he forgot to ask her last week and was rewarded with a fresh wave of guilt when Stan showed up to breakfast Saturday morning with dark, dark circles under his eyes.  Zayn personally always made sure they cast  _Muffliato_  when he was still hooking up with Louis and Harry, and he’s pretty sure that they still cast it most of the time, but they do forget sometimes and Zayn is concerned for Stan’s wellbeing.

When he gets there, Hermione offers him tea, as per usual.  Zayn splashes in some cream and adds two spoonfuls of sugar, and he’s just about to take a sip of it when he gets a whiff of it right under his nose.

“Hold on, is there cinnamon in this?”

“Yes, it’s called Hot Cinnamon Spice, I just bought it,” says Hermione, taking a sip of hers.

“I can’t drink it, unfortunately.”

“Why no-  _oh,_  right, Draco told me you’re allergic to Billywig stings, and now you must be on the antidote and you can’t have cinnamon, of  _course,_ how stupid of me.  I’m sorry, Zayn, here–” she takes his teacup away from him and makes to push hers away as well.

“Oh, no, it’s fine, you can drink yours,” Zayn says hurriedly.  “Don’t worry about me, I don’t even like cinnamon that much anyway.”

She looks at him carefully and then seems to decide that he’s being sincere.  “Alright, if you say so.  Can I get you anything else?”  
“No, I’m fine, really,” Zayn insists. 

“Well, just let me know,” says Hermione, taking another sip of her tea.  “Do you have anything you want to work on today, or should I come up with something?  I do have some paperwork that needs filing–”

“Well,” Zayn cuts her off quickly at the mention of paperwork, making her laugh, “I was wondering if we could try to make a spell that’s kind of – kind of like the reverse of  _Muffliato?_   Like, for example, if I didn’t want to – um, hear what you were saying–”

“Zayn, am I  _that_  boring?” asks Hermione jokingly.

“Oh, no, no, I just meant hypothetically, like, if I wanted to mute a… conversation someone was having, so that I couldn’t hear it.”

“Hmm,” says Hermione, tapping her chin, “that would be useful, actually, especially when Harry and Ginny come over for dinner and the three of them start talking about Quidditch.  Let’s see if we can’t come up with something, hmm?”

They spend the next hour trying variations on  _Muffliato_ , spending large quantities of time staring at the wood grains on the old desk and trying to think of something new.  Finally, Zayn tries  _Sonus Arresto_ and is successfully unable to hear Hermione shouting at him. 

“And I could hear you just fine,” Hermione tells him excitedly after he removes it, “and I could also hear myself, meaning that you didn’t actually make me mute.  Well done, well done.”

Zayn begins to show Hermione the exact wand motion that he used to cast the spell when he feels a tell-tale tingling start to throb in his fingers and toes.  “Oh, wait a second, it’s time to take the antidote again.”

He extracts one of the little vials, now filled with potion, from his pocket, but he has trouble getting the stopper open and feels himself floating out of his seat. 

“Wow, you really are allergic,” says Hermione, watching him levitate with an amused look on her face.

“Professor Malfoy told me to never eat Fizzing Whizbees,” Zayn informs her as he floats above her desk.

“Yeah, that wouldn’t end well, I don’t think. The powdered Billywig stings are what make them fizz, you know,” Hermione tells him.

Zayn finally gets the vial open and drinks its contents gratefully, smacking his lips and then yelping as gravity takes hold of him once again and he plummets down to land on Hermione’s desk.

“I could’ve thought that out better,” he admits as Hermione cackles.  Zayn climbs off as gracefully as he can, which isn’t saying much seeing as his arse sends a stack of papers to the floor as he slides off the desk.  Lovely.

He kneels down to gather up the papers and his eyes land on today’s copy of the  _Daily Prophet._ The headline reads, “2 MUGGLES DEAD BY THE KILLING CURSE.”

“Did you see this?” he asks Hermione, showing her the headline as he hands the rest of the papers to her so she can put them back in her preferred order.

“Oh, yes, it’s awful.  Arnold and Phoebe Riddle – they were from Ottery-St.-Catchpole, which is right by where Ron’s parents live.  I think Ron’s mum even knew them.”

“Why would you kill Muggles?” Zayn wonders out loud, disgusted.  “Hey, wait a second – Riddle, wasn’t that You-Know-Who’s–”

“My mind jumped to that as well,” Hermione admits, “but I don’t think they were related in any way, and even if they were – not to be macabre, but there wasn’t any blood loss or anything like that, so I don’t think that the neo-Death Eaters had anything to do with it, or else they would have definitely needed some, er,  _part_  of the bodies for the reincarnation spell.  The person who found them thought they were sleeping, that’s how peaceful they looked.”

Zayn frowns.  “Still, that’s awful, though.”

“It is,” Hermione agrees.  “I hope Ron’s the one who gets to take the case.  He’s been feeling a bit…  _uninspired_  lately, you know, burnt out and all that, so hopefully this’ll put him back in the crimefighting spirit.” 

Zayn nods.

“Now, how about we go over that spell a couple more times, and then you can help me with paperwork,” Hermione says. 

Zayn grumbles a bit.

Hermione shrugs.  “A couple of days ago Ron asked me what good it was having an apprentice if I still had to do all of my work myself, and now here I am, a changed woman.  You can blame my husband.”

xxx

Zayn walks back to his common room an hour later shaking his hands, trying to get the cramps out of his fingers from the unending stacks of papers he had to file.  He’s a little bit resentful of Ron for reminding Hermione that she essentially has a human slave at her disposal, honestly. _More_  than a little bit resentful.

When he arrives at the portrait concealing the entrance to his common room, he’s pleasantly surprised to see a bouquet of calla lilies hovering just in front of the portrait.

“What’s this about?” he asks the portrait, closing his fingers around the flowers and bringing them close to smell them.

“I’ve been instructed not to reveal anything, but I think you’re in for a treat,” the auror tells him, clasping his hands together.

“This is probably all just a big conspiracy,” says Zayn.  “Mountain troll.”

The painting swings forward and Zayn steps tentatively through the portrait hole, unsure of what he’s going to find.  Pleasantly, it’s more of the same – single flowers and bunches of different kinds of lilies suspended at different heights throughout his common room, like a floating garden.  It’s absolutely beautiful, and in the middle of all of them stands Liam, holding one of the bouquets himself.  It’s – even though he’s already  _Zayn’s_ , like, even though they’re already dating, Zayn still feels his heart clench and flutter and beat wildly against his ribcage with nerves.

“Hi,” Zayn croaks out, overwhelmed by the sweet smell of the flowers.

“Hi,” Liam replies softly, smiling.  “I, um – I hope you like lilies, Louis told me they were your favorite flower, and I  _really_  hope he wasn’t taking the piss–”

“Oh, no, he wasn’t joking, I think they’re – I think they’re lovely,” Zayn tells him.  “What’s the occasion?  I have a feeling you’re about to break some really bad news or something.”

Liam laughs.  “Not at all.  I just wanted to do something special to ask you if you–” he pauses, stepping right up close to Zayn and pressing the flowers in the tight space between their bodies– “would do me the honor of going to the Yule Ball with me.”

The butterflies start up again, stronger, and why are they even still  _there_ , Zayn’s been dating Liam for over a  _month,_ Merlin–

“ _Liam,”_  Zayn gasps, delighted, “you didn’t have to – you don’t even have to ask me, of  _course_  I’ll go with you.”

“I wanted to ask you,” Liam murmurs, pressing his lips to Zayn’s forehead.  “Wanted it to be special for you, you know, since it’s your first Yule Ball and all.”

“And my last,” Zayn says helpfully.  “This is really – um, I’m–”

Liam cuts him off by bringing their lips together, and Zayn closes his eyes and lets Liam stop his babbling.  He brings both of his hands up and cradles Liam’s face between them, thumbing at his stubble as he deepens the kiss.

Liam – Zayn has a lot of feelings about Liam, actually, and right now he and his feelings are very conflicted between snuggling into him and enjoying the beauty of the levitating flower display surrounding them and dropping to his knees, ripping Liam’s trousers down, and choking on his dick.  Zayn’s in this perpetual sort of debate with himself over how to respond any time Liam does something nice for him, and Liam has done a  _lot_  of nice things for him.  Zayn had given him his first blowjob just last week, and he’s been a little bit addicted since then to the way Liam’s eyes roll back in his head when Zayn swallows him down.

Liam’s hand that isn’t holding the lilies comes up to press in against the small of Zayn’s back, and Zayn makes a desperate little noise at how nice Liam’s big hand feels splayed over his robes, pulling their torsos in closer together.  Zayn tilts his head to the side and goes up on his tiptoes just the tiniest bit, making the angle of the kiss that much better and pulling a groan from Liam’s throat.

Suddenly, Zayn hears a light shifting noise over near Perrie’s staircase.  He opens one eye and slyly glances over Liam’s shoulder at the staircase; a flash of brightly colored hair disappears from view almost as soon as he looks over.  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

He pulls away from the kiss and feels blood start to rush south as Liam gives a little whine and chases after his lips, eyes still closed. 

“What d’you say we take this upstairs, hmm?”  Zayn murmurs quietly.

“You don’t want to snog in the middle of a bunch of floating lilies? I thought it was romantic,” Liam asks, pouting.

“’Course I do,” Zayn says, kissing him on the nose.  “S’just a little more…  _private_  upstairs.”

It only takes Liam a few seconds to understand. “Oh, right.   _Oh.”_

They hurry up Zayn’s staircase holding hands, laughing as they hear Leigh-Anne’s muffled cursing behind them.

Zayn immediately pushes Liam against the door once they’ve secured themselves in his room, kissing him hungrily and tugging on his short hair.  Liam stretches one hand out to place the bouquet of lilies on Zayn’s desk, and then he’s kissing back just as fiercely, grabbing at Zayn’s bum with both hands and squeezing teasingly.  Zayn fucking  _loves_  how much more confident Liam’s gotten, how much more forward – it means that he trusts Zayn and is comfortable being with him, and they fit together so  _nicely_ , and it’s starting to feel so  _natural_ that it makes Zayn’s head spin just thinking about it.

“You’re so – fucking – cute–” Zayn gasps out between kisses.

Liam pulls away, frowning.   _“Cute?_ I don’t want to be  _cute._ Handsome, or rugged, maybe–”

“Those things too,” Zayn tells him firmly, sucking a light bruise into his neck.  Liam makes as if to spin them around, like he’s going to press  _Zayn_ against the door instead, but as much as Zayn would like that, he has other plans.  “No, no, wanna suck you.”

Liam whimpers and leans back against the door for support as Zayn drops to his knees, shrugging off his robe as he goes.  Liam hadn’t been wearing a robe even back in the common room, so there’s fewer layers for Zayn to remove as he unbuttons Liam’s trousers and pulls down his pants, letting his thick, half-hard cock bob free.

“Fuck,” Zayn whines, helpless against the desperate impulse to get his mouth on his boyfriend.  Liam’s cock is warm, filling his mouth deliciously, and as he sucks and tongues at it to get Liam harder it releases a drop or two of salty precome, making Zayn hum happily.  He looks up at Liam through half-lidded eyes and is pleased to find Liam looking back down at him, fisting a hand in his own hair in order to let Zayn take his time.

It’s considerate, it really is, but there are some days that Zayn just really wants his mouth fucked and today happens to be one of those days.  He pulls off of Liam with a wet  _pop,_ noting happily that Liam is almost fully hard, his tip drooling precome now that Zayn’s working him with his hand.

“Want you to fuck my mouth, Li,” he says softly, his tongue curling dirtily around the words as Liam shudders.

“No, I – don’t want to hurt you,” Liam insists, his eyes sliding closed in bliss as Zayn keeps stroking him firmly.

“You won’t,” Zayn tells him.  “I know you won’t.  And I really –  _Merlin,_ I really want it, babe, please–”

Liam scrubs a hand over his eyes and moans as Zayn sucks just the tip of his cock into his mouth.  Zayn tongues mercilessly at his slit until finally Liam’s hands fly into his hair and push him down further.

“You have to tell me if I hurt you,” Liam tells him, trying to sound stern but failing miserably.  Zayn smirks in victory and nods with Liam’s cock still in his mouth, making Liam swear and thrust his hips lightly.

Zayn holds as still as he can, waiting for Liam to take the initiative, and finally he does, gripping Zayn’s face gently and starting to fuck in and out of his mouth in shallow strokes.  He’s so, so hard now, his cock hot and pulsing on Zayn’s tongue, and Zayn wants more than anything to move his head forward until he gags, but he refrains, knowing it’ll freak Liam out. 

Eventually, once Liam seems to realize that Zayn really, really likes it, he starts getting more confident in his thrusts, and Zayn can see the bottoms of his abs peeking out of his shirttails start to clench every time he moves his hips forward,  _fuck,_ it’s so hot that Zayn can’t help but imagine Liam fucking him for real.  He has a really powerful body, and it would probably be so  _good,_ and his cock’s so big and thick that Zayn knows he’d feel it for days – not something he’d ever really wanted before, but now he imagines sitting next to Liam in Potions and still feeling the unrelenting shape of his cock inside him from the day before, and it’s fucking  _hot._   It feels like it’s never enough with Liam, like he always wants  _more,_ anything Liam can give him, and it might be greedy but Zayn desperately wants to  _give,_ too, give Liam anything he asks for and more.

Zayn looks up again and realizes Liam has started to watch him, watch the hot slide of his cock in between Zayn’s lips as he fucks his mouth, and Zayn leans forward a bit, meaning that on the next thrust Liam’s cock slips a little bit down his throat, making him gag slightly and making Liam’s rhythm falter as Zayn’s throat squeezes around him.

“Oh – oh my god, are you–” Liam stammers, trying to draw back, but Zayn doesn’t let him, follows him with his mouth until the door prevents Liam from backing up any further.  He moans around Liam’s cock, trying to reassure him, and Liam strokes a shaking hand over his cheek before he starts to fuck him again.

Zayn tries to relax his throat as much as possible, and this time when Liam picks up the pace of his thrusts he starts to slide down Zayn’s throat a bit, and Zayn’s eyes start to water but he’s so happy and feels so full and he doesn’t even bring his hands up to wipe at them, just keeps clutching at Liam’s strong thighs, digging his nails in encouragingly.

Liam’s eyes are closed again, and his teeth are sunk into his lower lip in concentration, but every so often a little moan escapes from his lips that makes Zayn even harder where he’s straining against his own trousers.  He reaches a hand down to himself and manages to get his trousers open, relieving some of the pressure and palming himself through his pants.

When Liam looks down at him and sees that he’s touching himself, he moans, “Oh god, oh – nngh, c-close, Zayn.”

Zayn groans happily as Liam blurts more precome onto his tongue, and it’s salty, slick in an entirely different way than his own saliva, and it tastes so  _good_ that he can’t wait to have Liam come down his throat.  He pushes himself further onto Liam’s cock, taking him as far in as he possibly can, and then Liam’s shouting and gripping at his hair, hips rocking shallowly as he comes.  Zayn swallows as much of it as he can, letting a little leak out around the corners of his mouth, and he sucks Liam through his orgasm until Liam whimpers and pulls his spent cock out from between Zayn’s lips.

“Fuck,” Liam whispers quietly, looking dazed, and he really doesn’t swear that often and it’s so  _hot_  to hear him, he sounds so naughty – and shit, Zayn’s getting close as well, and he frantically brings his other hand down to take himself fully out of his pants, stroking his cock quickly as he rests his head against Liam’s fuzzy thigh.

“Zayn, can I – I want to do you, too,” says Liam.  Zayn pauses, his cock throbbing in protest, to try and process what he thinks he just heard.

“Oh, Li, you don’t – you don’t have to–” he says, only coming off as a  _little_  whining and desperate.  Liam hasn’t ever blown anyone before, and Zayn didn’t want to rush him,  _still_  doesn’t want to rush him.

“I want to,” Liam insists.  Zayn nods slowly and stands up, his knees shaking and his hard cock bobbing heavily.  They both step out of their trousers hurriedly and then Liam’s back him up, kissing him and licking into his mouth as they reach Zayn’s bed.  Zayn falls on his back when he feels the backs of his knees hit the edge of his bed, and Liam climbs on top of him, still kissing him and slotting his thigh in between Zayn’s.  Zayn ruts against him gratefully, feeling himself hurtle wildly toward the edge of orgasm.

“Liam, I’m – m’really close, so, if you – actually want to–”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Liam says, laughing, and Zayn giggles too as he pushes himself fully onto the bed, letting Liam settle in between his legs.  Fuck, this is a sight he’s been imagining ever since he set his sights on Liam back in September, and it’s even better than he could’ve dreamed.

Liam takes hold of his cock and looks at it curiously, wide-eyed, almost  _innocently,_ and Zayn has to throw his head back and close his eyes for a second to avoid nutting all over his face.  His head snaps forward again when he feels Liam’s hot tongue lick tentatively at his tip, curling over his skin and lapping up the precome he’s been leaking.

The sound that comes out of Zayn’s mouth then is part whimper, part strangled groan, and Liam smiles and purses his lips around the head, then, sucking carefully.  When Zayn moans  _yes_  and thumbs over his cheek, Liam sinks down several inches, drawing back to lick over his lips a bit and then taking him in again, hollowing his cheeks as he pulls back.  It feels incredible,  _fuck._

“Li, yeah – yeah, m’gonna – please–”

Liam makes a determined noise and swallows him down again, and Zayn feels himself hit the back of Liam’s throat and is ready to yank him off if he starts gagging, but – he  _doesn’t,_ Liam doesn’t gag at  _all,_ just keeps taking him in and in until he’s fit Zayn’s entire length down his throat.  It’s so surprising and so  _tight_  that Zayn doesn’t stand a chance, just gives a tortured groan and comes, and he hopes that Liam’s okay with swallowing because he had absolutely zero chance to warn him.  Liam moans happily, though, and keeps sucking him through it, swallowing everything Zayn gives him as Zayn blacks out a little bit from the pleasure.

When Liam finally pulls off, Zayn feels as if he’s just had his brains sucked out through his cock.  “Liam, holy –  _shit,_  where did you learn to do that?  I thought you said you hadn’t done it before!”

Zayn’s not jealous, not – not  _really,_ mostly curious, actually.

“Hadn’t done what?” Liam asks, tilting his head and licking his lips in a far too innocently seductive manner.

“Done what – deepthroat, of course,” says Zayn, throwing a hand over his forehead.  He feels exhausted.

“Oh, um – I didn’t learn it, really, like I said, I’d never done that before,” Liam tells him. 

“Then you must not – you don’t have a  _gag reflex,_ Li, what the fuck.”

“I was wondering when I was going to start gagging,” says Liam contemplatively.  “I guess we’ll have to try it again sometime, just to make sure.”

“I guess we  _definitely_  will,” says Zayn, pulling Liam’s mouth up to his and kissing him deeply.

xxx

“He doesn’t have a gag reflex?” Louis asks incredulously. 

He and Zayn are walking up to Zayn’s common room after dinner Saturday night to pregame the Ravenclaw party with Liam, Perrie, and the rest of the girls.  Louis has been doing surprisingly well since that day he spent crying on Zayn’s shoulder, all things considering, and Zayn isn’t exactly sure if he’s just really good at holding in his emotions or if he’s genuinely over the whole thing.  He and Harry had apparently had a bit of a row that night, and Louis has been a bit clingier where Harry’s concerned ever since, but that’s the only real, tangible effect Zayn can see as a result of the whole thing. Zayn had invited Harry to pregame with them as well, but he’d told them that he was pregaming with Nick and his friends.  Typical.

“Nope,” says Zayn.  “Nothing.  Not even a little bit.”

“Holy shit,” says Louis, looking impressed.  “I’m a bit peeved, honestly, it took me  _weeks_  of choking on Hazza’s cock before I got rid of mine.”

On the wall, a portrait of a young mother pushing a frilly pram huffs at them, scandalized, and leans down to cover her baby’s ears.

“Yeah, I feel kind of inferior now,” Zayn says, laughing.  “I wanted to do something nice for  _him,_ y’know, since he asked me to the Yule Ball, but there he was almost making me pass out.”

“He asked you to the Yule Ball?” Louis asks.  “Is he stupid?  Of  _course_  you guys are going together.”

Zayn had thought the same thing, but he finds himself saying defensively, “I think it was a sweet gesture, anyway.  It’s always better not to assume.”

“It’s a lot easier and less expensive to assume,” Louis says.  “I mean, take me and Harry.  We’re obviously going together, even though we haven’t talked about it, and neither of us has to raid a flower shop in the meantime.”

“You haven’t talked about it at all?” asks Zayn, frowning.

“No, but, like, we don’t need to.  Who else would either of us go with?”

Zayn can think of somebody, but he decides not to push it.  He’s already mildly dreading being sober at a party full of his drunk friends; he doesn’t need to make his night worse by sending Louis into full Nick Grimshaw rant mode.

xxx

Several hours later, all of Zayn’s friends (and what feels like the whole castle) are several drinks in, and Zayn is still stone cold sober.  He tries to feel grateful that he isn’t floating above the whole party, but somehow he’d rather be drunk and levitating helplessly than sober and grounded.  It would be  _much_  more fun.

The party in the Ravenclaw common room is a lively one; the moonlight reflecting off of the snow outside means that Ravenclaw tower is lit up inside more than it usually is at night, and somebody has charmed several disco balls to hang above the crowd and reflect the moonlight, throwing bright droplets of white light around the room.  The punch that Jaymi and Ant had made is a neon purple color and fizzes wildly whenever anybody ladles some into a goblet.  It’s probably very tasty, Zayn thinks bitterly.

He’s stuck by Liam’s side all night, seeing as he doesn’t need to DJ because Nick Grimshaw has it covered.  And as much as Zayn hates to admit it, Nick is really very good.  He has a good playlist and knows how to mix the songs together well, and the happily dancing crowd seems to think so too.  Hopefully they don’t like him  _too_  much better than Zayn.

What seems to makes Nick a great DJ, at least as far as Zayn can tell, is his ability and willingness to cater to the crowd and milk the resulting attention.  Zayn is more of a solitary person himself, but Nick seems to love interacting with the revelers and his mixes reflect that, which Zayn respects.  Doesn’t mean he can’t be a  _bit_  jealous, though.

He and Liam dance for a bit, mingling on the floor with the rest of the students, but Zayn can tell that Liam is trying to stay sober in solidarity with him and he doesn’t want to ruin Liam’s night just because he himself can’t drink. 

So, after their dancing is interrupted by Zayn beginning to float off the ground and subsequently taking his medicine, Zayn insists that they go over to the drinks table so that Liam can have something for himself.

“I  _can_ have fun while sober, you know,” Zayn tells him as they make their way over.  “I’ll be fine.”

“See, I know that’s true in  _theory,”_ says Liam, “but you just look like you’re having an absolutely miserable time.”

“Well, I’m not,” sniffs Zayn, resolving to school his face somehow into a less miserable expression for Liam’s sake.

They arrive at the drinks table and Zayn pours out a goblet of punch, handing it to Liam when it’s full to the brim.

“If I didn’t know better, Zayn Malik, I’d say you were trying to get me drunk,” Liam says with a smile, taking a sip of the punch.  “Although, I have to say, this doesn’t taste like it has a single drop of alcohol in it, honestly.”

“That’s how Jaymi always makes it,” says Zayn.  “Nobody realizes how much booze is actually in it until it ends up fucking everyone up.”

“What was that?” asks Liam.  In the short period of time that Zayn was speaking, Liam has managed to drain the entirety of his goblet.  “Good stuff, really excellent stuff, here. Another!”

“I’ve created a monster,” Zayn mutters, refilling Liam’s goblet.  “Only one more for now, babe, it’s gonna hit you soon, I promise.”

Zayn leads Liam away from the punch table as his boyfriend sips happily at his second goblet.  As they push back through the crowd, they run into Niall dancing with a pretty blonde girl who, judging by the way Zayn’s aggressively drawn to her even though he mostly likes dick, has some measure of Veela blood in her.

“Hey, Liam, Zayn!” Niall greets them.  The girl smiles shyly at them.  “Great party, yeah?”

“It’s pretty good,” Liam agrees, swaying a little.

“Have to admit, though, I kind of miss you as the DJ, Zayn,” Niall continues.  “I don’t recognize  _any_  of these songs.”  Zayn can’t help but smile and preen a bit.  “Oh!  Sorry, I’m being a prick.  Lads, this is Elle, she goes to Beauxbatons.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Elle.  She has a beautiful voice.  Zayn was expecting her to have a French accent like most of the other new girls, but she sounds like she’s from somewhere in northern England.

“You too,” says Zayn.  Liam hiccups and waves.  “Don’t worry, Elle, most of us are a lot less weird than Niall here.”

“Oi, don’t scare her away!” Niall shouts indignantly, pulling Elle in closer to him and making her giggle.  Zayn thinks they look very nice together.  “Off, go on. Shoo!”

“Love you, Ni,” says Liam, leaning in and kissing him sloppily on the cheek.  Zayn pulls him back, barely containing his laughter as he notices that Liam’s goblet is once again empty.

“Merlin, what’s in the punch?” asks Niall, raising his eyebrow at Liam’s state.

“Happiness,” says Liam very seriously.  Zayn drags him away as Elle’s laughter, clear and pleasing as bells, follows them.

He pulls Liam in close when they find a nice, secluded spot to dance, joining their lips and trying not to get any of the sweet alcohol on his tongue.

“I see we’re all having just a  _lovely_  time tonight,” Nick Grimshaw’s magically amplified, snarky voice booms over the music.   _“Really_ glad I could be of service.”

Zayn pulls away from Liam, thinking that Nick is calling the two of them out for snogging a bit heavily, but then he sees that Louis has Harry pressed against the wall almost directly next to where Nick has his DJ booth set up, his hands and mouth absolutely all over Harry.  Harry’s eyes are shut tightly and his mouth is slack in pleasure as Louis bites at his neck.  Zayn can’t help but think that their placement is no accident on Louis’s part, and apparently Nick seems to be thinking along the same lines.  For someone who refuses to date Harry, Louis is very possessive of him.

“I thought he was picking on us,” Liam tells Zayn, yelling to be heard over the music.

“Me too,” laughs Zayn.  He kisses Liam again and they dance in their own private bubble for a few songs.  Liam’s giggly and pliant, just on the right side of drunk, and he keeps sliding his hands lower and lower down Zayn’s back.

Eventually, Zayn makes the executive decision that they need a break and Liam needs some water.  He sits Liam down on one of the couches by the empty fireplace and goes over to the drinks table to fill a goblet with water.  When he gets back, he finds that Louis and Harry have joined Liam on the couch.

“Hey, guys,” Zayn greets them, handing Liam the water and then sitting down on his lap.

“Hey, Zee!” Louis slurs happily.  He seems as drunk as Liam, maybe even more so. 

Some of Nick’s friends (Zayn hasn’t gotten around to learning any of their names) spot Harry and pull up a couch to sit right across from the four of them.

“Aiden, darling, how are you?” shouts Louis, blowing one of them a kiss.  Harry frowns and slings a casual-but-totally-not arm around Louis’s shoulders.   _This_ is the part of the evening during which Zayn could benefit from being drunk, honestly.  He hates seeing the two of them dance around and tease each other like this.

For the next couple of minutes, Louis and Harry make small talk with the group of people on the couch opposite them.  Zayn  _hates_  small talk; he’s not good at it even when he’s drunk, and he’s even worse at it while sober, so he just sits there and listens, checking every now and then to make sure Liam is okay.

Liam’s just quietly finishing up his water when Harry gets up and announces that he’s going to get something to drink, asking the group at large if anyone else wants anything.

“Some punch, babe? Thanks,” says Louis, pinching him on the bum.  Harry giggles happily and then walks away.

Almost as soon as Harry leaves, Nick Grimshaw comes wandering over and plops himself down on the opposite couch.  He must be on a self-imposed break or something; Zayn can hear a pre-recorded mix playing over the din of the dancing crowd.

“Phew!” he exclaims, cracking his knuckles.  “That’s exhausting work.  Zayn, mate, I don’t know how you do it.”

“I’m less energetic about it, honestly,” Zayn tells him.

“I’ll have to keep that in mind from now on,” says Nick, gratefully slinging back a shot of Firewhiskey that somebody hands him.  “I’m knackered.  Lee Jordan didn’t teach me how to pace myself, evidently.”

“You’ve worked with Lee Jordan?” asks Liam.  “That’s awesome!”

“Yeah, him and Cormac McLaggen,” Nick tells them proudly.  “Plus some Muggle DJs, too, but you’ve probably never heard of them–”

“Oh,  _no,_ go on, I’m sure we’re  _all_  interested,” says Louis loudly.  Zayn cringes internally.

Nick glares at him.  “Well, they all work for the BBC.  Matt Fincham – he runs the drive-time show – and I’m  _sure_  if you’re Muggleborn you’ve heard of Greg James.”

Zayn has as well, but he’s not Muggleborn and he isn’t sure why he’s heard of this person.  It becomes abruptly obvious when Louis snorts and says,  _“Oh,_ yes, I’ve  _definitely_ heard of him.”

Oh,right.  He’s that radio presenter Louis slept with over the summer.

 _“Well,”_ sniffs Nick – Louis’s goading is obviously working on him – “then I’m sure you’re aware of what a  _privilege_  it is to know him.”

“Oh, I’m  _well_  aware,” laughs Louis harshly, and they’re both drunk and getting progressively angrier, this is definitely not good, “and I happen to count myself among the privileged, as it were.”

 _“Really?_ I don’t believe you.”

“Well,” amends Louis, shifting in his seat and preening, “I would say I’ve known him in the more… biblical sense.”

Zayn isn’t sure what “the biblical sense” means, but he can feel Liam take in a sharp gasp of air underneath him, so it must be an important Muggle concept.  Nick is apparently also familiar with the term, as his mouth drops open.

 _“You’ve_  fucked Greg James?” he asks loudly in disbelief.

Louis smirks and answers him just as loud.  “If we’re getting into specifics, Grimshaw,  _he_ fucked  _me,_  but yes, I did, and it was  _brilliant.”_

He sits back against the couch looking smug, like he’s happy to have gotten one over on Nick, but then there’s a loud clatter behind them and Zayn, Liam, and Louis turn around to see Harry standing there, spilled goblets of punch at his feet.   _Shit shit shit –_

“You’ve  _what?”_ Harry asks, his lower lip trembling.

Louis’s mouth drops open, but he’s too drunk to say anything but, “Oh, shit – um–”

“I can’t – I thought–” Harry stammers, and shit, he’s drunk too, everybody is plastered, this is  _not_  the time –

“Wait, Haz, it was over the summer–” Louis offers weakly.

“Like that makes it better!” Harry shouts angrily, turning away just as Zayn starts to see tears drip down his face. 

Louis stands up, swaying a bit.  “Hazza, wait – please–” 

But Harry’s already stalking away, and Zayn can see him go so far as to clamber quickly and unsteadily out of the portrait hole, leaving the common room entirely.   _Fuck._

“Shit, I have to – go after him–” Louis says, and his voice is getting thicker, like he’s about to cry too – everybody is  _so drunk –_

“No, you’ve done enough damage already, Tomlinson,” slurs Nick, starting to stand up.  “I’ll go talk to him.”

“Everybody shut it!” snaps Zayn, standing up quickly and startling the group into silence.  “You’re all fucking pissed, none of you should be talking to  _anybody._ Nick, sit down. Liam, give Lou the rest of your water.  Louis, come with me.  _I’ll_ go talk to Harry.”

The group at large seems so surprised at Zayn’s outburst that nobody objects, and once Louis is clutching the goblet of water, Zayn grabs him by the elbow and drags him through the crowd, trying to find Stan or another friend who’d be willing to take care of Louis.  Along the way, Louis starts crying, and – Zayn hadn’t  _ever_  seen Louis cry in all the time he’d been here until last week, and now he’s seen him cry twice in one week, and Louis can’t seem to stop himself from blubbering out, “He wasn’t – supposed to – f-find out – like that – I never w-wanted him to, Zee, you h-have to believe me, I haven’t – there hasn’t been – anybody else – since then–” and then he stops making sense, sobbing drunkenly as Zayn tries to pull him along as gently as possible.

“I know, Lou, I believe you,” Zayn says, running a soothing hand along his back.  “Let’s go find Stan, yeah?”

Louis whimpers something in response that Zayn doesn’t understand.  Eventually he finds Stan chatting with a couple Slytherin sixth-years near Nick’s empty DJ booth.

“Stan,” says Zayn, heaving Louis over and into Stan’s arms, “are you sober enough to take care of Lou?”

Louis is still openly sobbing, now into Stan’s shirt. 

“Shit, what happened to ’im?” asks Stan worriedly.

“Um – some stuff with Harry, I guess he’ll tell you if he wants,” says Zayn awkwardly.  “I have to go find Harry now, take care of him, alright?”

“Yeah, I will,” says Stan, patting Louis on the back.

Zayn sighs and turns away, still resenting being sober, and walks over the portrait hole and exits the Ravenclaw common room.  He has a pretty good idea of where he thinks Harry has gone, so he climbs the interminable number of steps that it takes to get to the top of Ravenclaw tower.  His suspicions are proven right when he emerges into the frosty December air at the very top of the tower to find Harry slumped down against the railing in a pathetic, shivering huddle.

“Harry,” he says sadly, and Harry whips his head up, hastily wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.

“Oh, um – hi, Zayn,” Harry greets him.

Zayn walks over to Harry, shivering at the wind slicing right through his t-shirt and jeans, and sits beside him, throwing an arm around him.  “Why don’t you come back inside?  It’s awful cold out here.”

“Want to be out h-here,” Harry insists, wiping at his eyes again.  He probably can’t feel the cold as much as Zayn can, considering that he’s drunk, but that doesn’t mean the cold’s any less harmful to him.

Zayn pauses for a second to collect his thoughts, and before he can say something comforting, Harry asks him, “Did you know?  About – um – Louis?”

Zayn doesn’t want to lie, but he also doesn’t want to be a shit friend; unfortunately, Zayn’s uncomfortable, indecisive silence is answer enough for Harry, whose shoulders start shaking as more tears run down his face.

“Um–” Zayn starts, trying to figure out what to say that won’t make the situation any worse than it already is– “he didn’t, um, he asked me not to tell you.  I think he was ashamed of it.  He felt guilty.”

“Didn’t sound very ashamed of it when he was screaming about it to Nick,” says Harry, swallowing bitterly.

“Nick does bring out the worst in him,” Zayn allows.  Harry wipes at his eyes again.  “Harry–”

“It’s not – I mean–” Harry cuts him off– “we aren’t  _together,_  are we, so I guess he’s allowed to sleep with whoever he wants, but–” and then he cuts himself off with more tears, his shoulders shaking as he shivers violently.  Zayn keeps rubbing at his back, not wanting to say any more; he doesn’t want to put words in Louis’s mouth, but he also doesn’t want to accidentally say anything that makes Harry feel even worse.

Eventually, Harry calms a little bit, but not in a good way – his shoulders become slumped, his posture resigned, and his tear-streaked face twists into an absolutely miserable expression.  He looks beaten-down,  _defeated,_ even, which is absolutely terrifying. 

“Zayn,” he says softly, tiredly.  “I love him, you know.”

“I know,” says Zayn.  Harry’s never told him outright, but it’s impossible to be within a ten-foot radius of Harry and  _not_  know that he’s blindingly in love with Louis.

“I just – I’m so fucking tired,” sniffs Harry.  “I just want to be with someone who wants to be with  _me_ , too.  I know it sounds, like, r-really fucking simple, but – I can’t change the fact that I love  _him_ and want to be with  _him_.  I’m stuck.  I d-don’t want to be like this anymore, but – I don’t know what to do.”

“I wish I could help you,” says Zayn sadly.  “I wish I knew what to do.”  He pulls Harry in close to him, and Harry sniffles into his shirt as the wind whips around the tower, blowing their hair back from their faces and freezing the tear tracks on Harry’s cheeks. 

“Don’t think there’s anything to d-do,” murmurs Harry, his whole body shivering.

“I could talk to him for you, if you want,” Zayn tells him, hugging him tightly to try to warm him back up.  “He’s the one who’s at fault here, you know, it’s not – it’s not right.”

Harry shakes his head vehemently. “No, n-no, don’t – I don’t want to m-make things worse. He’ll just – it’s fine, it’s fine, leave it.”

Zayn sighs. He _knew_ Harry was going to say that, knows that they’re not going to talk about this until it’s too late – until things have already blown up in their faces.

But it’s not exactly Zayn’s place to interfere to that degree, especially not right now, so all he says is, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, H. That wasn’t quite right of me, either.”

Harry’s lip trembles, but he nods and then nudges his head companionably against Zayn’s.  It seems like he isn’t sure of what to say any more than Zayn is.

Again, Zayn doesn’t want to put words in Louis’s mouth, even just for the sake of making Harry feel better, so he doesn’t say anything else at all, just rubs Harry’s shoulders through the thin material of his shirt as they sit quietly together and stare at the cold, bright moon.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, let me know what you thought in the comments! If you have questions or think you might know what's coming, don't leave those things in the comments - instead, message me on [tumblr](http://povverbottoms.tumblr.com)!! :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slytherin plays Gryffindor for the House Cup, Harry takes on an unexpected role, and Niall takes Louis out for a drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so so sorry this is so late !!! I've had awful luck with things lately and this is the earliest I've been able to post it :( I hope you like it !
> 
> There is under-negotiated kink play and sub drop in this chapter that continues on into the next because certain boys are stupid and don't know what they're doing. If you aren't comfortable reading that, feel free to message me on [tumblr](http://povverbottoms.tumblr.com) so I can catch you up to speed on what happens without you having to read about it!

The next day, Louis wakes up next to Harry in bed, fully-clothed, with a terrible, piercing headache and sore, puffy eyes. He rubs at them to get the sleep out, wincing at how sensitive they are, and then cringes as last night’s events all come rushing abruptly back to him. He cried so _much_ , and Harry – Harry  _knows_  –

Carefully, he peers over at Harry to check if he’s still asleep – only to find that Harry’s eyes are already open.  He’s on his back, staring at the canopy of the four-poster with a blank sort of expression on his face. 

“You’re up,” Louis says. Or, tries to say – his mouth is bone-dry from his hangover. It comes out as more of a croak.

Harry looks over at him. “Mmhmm.”

They look at each other for a little, sizing each other up. Harry’s eyes are red and his eyelids are swollen; Louis imagines that his own look very similar.

“Hey,” Louis says eventually. “I’m sorry you, um, had to find out that way–”

“No, it’s fine,” Harry says very quickly. “I shouldn’t have yelled or anything, I was just drunk.”

“But–”

“Seriously, it’s totally okay,” Harry insists firmly, looking away from Louis and back at the ceiling. “It’s, like, more than fine.  It’s whatever.”

Louis frowns. This is – what he wanted, he supposes, Harry not being upset with him, but for some unfathomable reason it  _stings_  a little bit to see Harry so nonchalant and robotic.

“Okay,” Louis says slowly. He closes the small distance between them on the bed and snuggles into Harry’s side, but Harry doesn’t melt into his touch like he usually does, and there’s an awful, telling delay before Harry finally wraps his arms around him. “Harry–”

“Shh,” Harry shushes him.

Louis swallows around the lump in his throat and doesn’t say anything else, just tries to appreciate Harry’s acceptance and not think about the silence.

xxx

This week is the last week of classes before the winter hols, so most of the students are in a much brighter mood than usual; spirits are high due to the impending two-week break that’s bringing with it the Yule Ball and, even sooner, the Gryffindor-Slytherin match for the Quidditch Cup. There are a lot of different reasons to be happy, but none of them seem to affect Louis, who stumbles through the week feeling off-kilter and lonely as he holds last-minute Quidditch team practices and studies for his Transfiguration exam. He doesn’t see much of Harry; if it’s possible, Harry has started spending even _more_ time with Nick Grimshaw and his annoying hipster posse, meaning the only time Louis really sees Harry is at night when they fall asleep next to each other.

They haven’t had sex since last Friday night – the night before the party – and it’s stressing Louis out more than he’d like to admit, but he doesn’t want to bring it up like a complete jerk when he’s getting to spend so little time with Harry as it is. The time they do spend together is fine, though, and Louis doesn’t want to say anything to jeopardize that, especially when it feels like they’re walking on thin ice no matter how much Harry insists nothing has changed.

Louis eats dinner with Liam and Zayn on Thursday night and discovers that Liam has, in a brash show of Gryffindor bravery, kicked Andy Samuels off of his Quidditch team.

“Serves him right,” Zayn says firmly.

“Hey, um,” says Louis, “not to spoil the warm fuzzy feelings you’re undoubtedly having right now, but you  _do_  know we’ve got a match to play in two days and you’re down a Beater?”

Liam shrugs. “Nathan Sykes said he would fill in. I’d rather lose with a good, honest team than win with a nasty team of cheaters.”

“See, that’s where we differ, Liam,” says Louis. “You’re such a  _Gryffindor.”_

“I know, isn’t he adorable?” asks Zayn, running his fingers through Liam’s hair. Louis makes a pointed gagging noise, causing all three of them to burst into laughter.

“S’he telling you how he kicked Andy out?” asks Niall, sitting down next to Louis. He’s brought Elle with him as well, whom Louis just met yesterday and already likes immensely.

“Yeah, I think it’s admirable, of course, but bloody stupid,” Louis tells him.

“Gryffindor,” says Niall with a shrug, like that explains everything. It does, actually. “Admirable’s kind of our thing.”

“Well, you’ll lose  _admirably_  then,” says Louis, looking at his nails and smirking.

“The whole school’s going to be cheering against you, though,” says Liam. “No offense, Lou.”

“Oh, none taken,” Louis says breezily. “That’s nothing new.”

“Beauxbatons too,” Niall puts in. “Right, Ellie?”

Elle rolls her eyes. “Niall’s under the impression that I have some sort of sway over my entire school.”

“I mean, you’re dating a Gryffindor,” says Zayn. “I don’t think any of you are dating Slytherins. Doesn’t seem too far-fetched.”

“Well, that’s just great,” Louis groans, throwing his hands up. “Every single one of you here is cheering for Gryffindor, so’s the rest of the school,  _and_ so is Beauxbatons – what’s left for me, bloody  _Durmstrang?”_

“Hey, cheer up, buddy,” says Niall. “At least you got Harry! Speaking of, where is he?”

Instead of comforting him, Niall’s words make Louis’s chest ache, his good mood disappearing almost instantly.

“Um,” says Louis, pasting a cheerful smile on his face and trying to pretend like he isn’t bothered, “think he had choir practice or something.”

Niall shakes his head, oblivious to Louis’s discomfort. “Nah, Choir was yesterday. We practiced our song for the Yule Ball, and it’s actually sounding good for once.”

“Oh, what are you guys singing?” asks Liam.

Louis becomes abruptly and nauseatingly aware of the fact that he’s the fifth wheel in this conversation, and he doesn’t even know where Harry  _is._  He never does, these days.

“Hey, um, speaking of that, I’m going to – go find Harry,” says Louis, suddenly unable to deal with being amongst happy couples any longer.  He kind of interrupted Niall, but he’s too panicked to care.  “I’ll see you guys later.”

He stands up from the table, leaving his dinner half-unfinished, and exits the Great Hall as fast as he can. He looks over at the Ravenclaw table as he leaves and sees every single one of Nick’s stupid friends, but no Nick or Harry. His mind extrapolates before he can help it, and it feels like someone’s slipped a frozen knife between his ribs.

Louis actually doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, what’s  _been_  wrong with him for the past week, but he’s never felt worse in his life.

He’s just passing by the entrance to the castle itself on the way to the dungeons when the great stone doors are pushed open and in come Nick and Harry, bundled up in scarves, pink-cheeked from the cold, and laughing.

“I’ve been telling the same bloody Flobberworm joke since my fourth year, but Hagrid never seems to tire of it, it’s priceless,” Nick is saying, making Harry laugh even harder. He takes off of his hat and his quiffs falls, limp and ridiculous, into his face.

“Oh, hey, Lou,” says Harry, starting to take off his many layers of outerwear. “Have you already had dinner?”

“Yeah,” says Louis. He’s not sure what to do now, because he left dinner to go find Harry but now it looks like Harry and Nick are just heading in to dinner. “I was just – um – going to go to bed.”

Harry tilts his head, looking at Louis strangely. “The sun only just went down.”

“Well, you know, uh. Big Quidditch match coming up and all that, I need my rest,” Louis says stupidly.

“I’m sure,” says Nick, tugging at Harry’s elbow, and Louis wants to punch him in the face because he  _wasn’t talking to him._  “Come on, Hazza, let the poor lad get his sleep and let’s go get something to eat.”

The two of them walk away from Louis, seemingly unaware of the way Louis is glaring absolute  _daggers_  at Nick’s back at the easy and too-familiar way he addressed Harry.  Harry doesn’t seem to mind, though, if the way he knocks his shoulder against Nick’s is any indication.

If it’s possible, Louis feels even worse now than he did in the Great Hall. He trudges down to the Slytherin common room in an uncommonly dark, foul mood, feeling sad and helpless because he  _doesn’t know what’s wrong with him._  In his dormitory, he flops down on Harry’s bed; he considers studying for his Potions exam tomorrow, but then remembers that he could almost literally take it in his sleep.

Instead, Louis actually  _does_  go to sleep, because it’s six-thirty at night and he’s tired and upset and pathetic and has nothing else to do.

xxx

Ten minutes into the most important Quidditch game Louis has ever played, with three entire schools’ worth of students watching, Nathan Sykes accidentally manages to knock Liam unconscious with a very badly-aimed Bludger.

The whole crowd gasps as Liam’s broom plummets to the ground, Liam’s unconscious body not far behind as his Quidditch robes billow out and slow his fall.

 _“Arresto Momentum!”_ Madam Hooch shouts frantically, sprinting onto the pitch and waving her wand at the falling boy.

She manages to halt Liam’s descent _just_ before he would have hit the ground, and it feels like the entire stadium exhales a sigh of relief, even the Slytherins.  Louis’s eyes scan the crowd for Zayn, wanting to see his reaction, and he catches sight of the Ravenclaw boy just in time to see him faint into Danny’s arms. 

“That was one nasty hit!” Stan yells over to Louis.

“I know,” Louis yells back. “Look, Zayn’s just fainted!”

Stan glances over to where Danny, Ant, and a few other Ravenclaws are trying to support Zayn and wake him back up – and promptly bursts into laughter.

“I’m _never_ gonna stop giving him shit for that,” yells Louis, laughing as well. “Bloody hell.”

Nathan Sykes is openly weeping into his thick Beater gloves, shaking off his teammates as they try to console him.  Louis’s not sure why they’re even trying – if _he_ was on Gryffindor, he’d have already given Sykes the verbal lashing of his young life.  But, that’s apparently not a Gryffindor thing to do.

 

 

Slytherin ends up winning the match and, by extension, the Quidditch cup. Louis would have felt a bit better about it if there had been someone – anyone – defending Gryffindor’s goalposts; Slytherin etiquette dictates that they show no mercy and continue as if nothing had happened, but still, Louis tries to go easy on the poor Gryffindors just so it isn’t  _too_  much of a massacre. Niall eventually catches the Snitch, but even one hundred and fifty points isn’t enough to close the wide gap that the Slytherins had opened during the hour-and-a-half long match.

It feels like a cheap way to triumph but, after all, a win is a win.  Louis's House is clearly very proud of their team, which is _great,_ because it’d been his goal the entire season, it’s just – Louis wishes he himself felt a bit better about it. He feels kind of… jittery afterwards, though, like he needs to stretch out his entire body, but no amount of stretching he does nor the scalding post-match shower he takes seems to relax his muscles. There’s some sort of itch that Louis isn’t able to scratch, almost like he needs to run laps around the castle or get into a fight with someone. It probably has to do with the fact that he didn’t have to actually put much effort into winning, so he hadn’t actually burned off all of the adrenaline he’d been pumped up on before the game.

Dinner doesn’t help, either – Harry brings Nick to come sit with Louis, Eleanor, and Stan. It’s sort of a disaster, because Louis and Stan are still winding down from the Quidditch game, Eleanor is entirely uninterested, Nick wants to talk about anything  _but_  Quidditch, and Harry is trying to have them all get along and have a single unified conversation, to very limited success and very awkward small talk. Louis feels twitchy all through dinner, and he excuses himself after dessert to go back to his dorm, thinking that maybe a quick wank might help take the edge off of whatever it is he’s feeling.

He gets himself off to the thought of fucking Harry over one of the benches in the locker room, making Harry scream and cry with how good it feels and how rough he’s being. Even after he shoots off onto his stomach with a soft cry of Harry’s name, though, Louis still feels antsy, like he could get hard again in a second, like that orgasm barely even mattered. He feels almost like crying because he doesn’t know what’s wrong, but he’s done quite enough crying this month – scratch that, this entire  _year_. He’s _more_ than met his tears quota, and he just fucking helped win the Quidditch Cup for his House today, so he decides to go down to the Common Room and try to celebrate.

There’s a large group of Slytherins down there sharing several bottles of some sort of liquor that Louis doesn’t recognize; they all cheer when they see him.

“There’s the captain himself!” yells JJ Hamblett, pointing and cheering.

Louis pastes a carefree smile on his face.  “And there’s my favorite Seeker!” he yells back, accepting various aggressive handshakes and slaps on the back as he makes his way forward to his team, who are in the center of the room and commanding everyone’s attention.

“And we all know the only reason he didn’t catch the Snitch today was out of pity,” says Jesy.  The rest of the Slytherins laugh.

Louis gets hugs from people he barely knows, people who two years ago were grumbling quietly about having a Muggleborn in Slytherin, but he can’t be arsed to care too much when the taste of victory is still so sweet in his mouth.

“Let’s have a toast,” Stan announces, waving the bottle of unidentified liquor around as everyone else cheers.

“What is that, anyway?” asks Louis as a shot glass is thrust into his hand.

“Dragon Barrel brandy,” Eleanor announces happily.  “Triple distilled.”

Louis takes a whiff of the alcohol he’s holding and nearly gags from how potent it is.

Before he can express any hesitations, Louis is being hoisted up onto Stan and Michael’s shoulders in jubilation, and he yelps and almost spills his shot of brandy. “Hey, easy, easy–”

“To Louis!” Michael yells, swaying a bit where he’s trying to hold Louis up. 

“To Louis,” the rest of the Slytherins echo, holding their drinks up.

“And the rest of the team,” Louis adds, but everyone is already knocking their shots back so he scrambles to do the same.

It _burns_ going down, and as Louis shudders he feels Stan and Michael do the same, almost dropping him as the liquor seizes them. He gets them to let him down a second later, swaying a bit on his feet and deciding that’s all he’s going to be having for the night.

The rest of his teammates and Housemates seem quite content to keep drinking, though, so Louis drops himself into a chair by the fireplace and watches with a small smile on his face as they start to set up some sort of elaborate drinking game involving almost all of the furniture in the room.

Louis isn’t sure why he doesn’t feel like drinking; he’s definitely in the mood to let off some steam and celebrate, but something doesn’t feel right about the situation. Something feels off, almost like it’s a dream.

Then, it hits him – the celebration is _missing_ someone, the _one_ person Louis had imagined would be here ever since he started entertaining his Quidditch Cup fantasies.

Harry’s not here.

xxx

Harry shows up about an hour later, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, and Louis doesn’t want to indulge him, doesn’t want to even _look_ at him because he’s so upset, but – but he’s so starved and desperate for Harry’s attention that he floats over to him immediately like a moth to a flame. All of his muscles feel like they’re aching, like he needs to crack every single one of his joints, and all he can hope is that spending time with Harry  _(alone,_  not with bloody Nick lurking about) will help.

“Hey, stranger,” he says, sidling up to Harry and snaking his arms around Harry’s waist.

Harry smiles at him, but doesn’t meet his eyes. “Hey, Lou.”

“I know you just got here,” says Louis, trying not to sound as needy as he feels, “but do you want to go upstairs?”

Harry nods. “Yeah, definitely. I, um – I have something I need to tell you, actually, when we’re by ourselves.”

Louis’s blood runs cold, and he hopes that his facial expression doesn’t betray the fact that his stomach just plummeted into his toes.  “Great, um – right. Well.”

He lets Harry go and turns around to walk up to their dormitory, hoping that Harry will follow him. Louis used to always  _know_  that Harry would follow him, but lately he's felt like he can't assume.

Once they’re in their room, Louis can feel the air change, and it’s – somehow  _awkward_  in a way, which it  _never_  is between them.  Something is definitely wrong.

Behind him, Harry says, “Louis, N–”

Louis spins around quickly and places his finger over Harry’s lips. “Is this news somehow life-threatening to me or my loved ones?”

Harry shakes his head, frowning.

“Then it can wait until tomorrow,” says Louis firmly, leaning forward.

Harry is only able to get out “But–” before Louis presses their lips together, and it only takes a couple of seconds for Harry to gently push him back.

Louis _panics,_ Harry – Harry _never_ pushes him away like this, and he needs to come up with something _fast_ that’s going to completely captivate Harry’s attention, focus it back on _Louis._ His mind is racing, racing–

“Lou, I need to–”

“I want you to dom me,” Louis blurts out wildly in a desperate attempt to distract Harry.

It works. Harry’s eyes widen and he stops trying to tell Louis whatever presumably terrible news he has. “What?”

“I’ve, um, I’ve been feeling really, like, twitchy and stressed-out since the game, right, and you always seem really relaxed… after,” continues Louis, shifting back and forth nervously.

Harry swallows, his eyes bright and confused. “I – if you _want_ to, I mean – I don’t want to hurt you or anything.”

Louis nods, biting his lip. “You won’t.”

“But first, I really think I should–”

“Nope,” Louis says, throwing himself at Harry and joining their lips together once again. He doesn’t waste any time, brings his hands up immediately to tangle themselves in Harry’s curls and tugs sharply, making Harry groan and melt into the kiss. They’ve haven’t done this for a whole week and Louis  _missed_  this, feels like everything’s right again now that their bodies are pressed close together and Harry’s backing the two of them up toward his bed. One of Harry’s hands brushes intimately over his cheek while the other gropes at his arse, and Louis gasps when they reach the bed and Harry quite literally throws him onto it.

“Harry,” he breathes, surprised and pleased.

Harry grins, scrubbing a hand through his messy curls. “I haven’t, like – well, you know I haven’t done this much. So just, um – let me know if it gets weird or anything. You can – you can use my safeword, if you want.”

Louis nods, feeling his pulse race in his throat. “Okay.”

Harry dips in for another kiss, pressing Louis into the bed with his hips and completely covering Louis’s body with his own. Louis is already absurdly drunk on Harry’s touch, giddy at the warm, solid feel of Harry caging him in. Their clothes aren’t even off yet, but Louis’s skin is tingling all the same.

They snog for a few more minutes until Louis starts to rut up against Harry – he’s hard now, got hard so fast just from _kissing,_ and from Harry being above him and all around him. When Louis presses their clothed cocks together, Harry groans and pulls off, hastily taking off his t-shirt and then pulling Louis’s over his head.

“You always look so good,” Harry breathes, entranced. Louis smirks and wonders if Harry is actually going to end up domming him at all, or if his unconventional ploy for Harry’s attention wasn’t even necessary after all. His fingers find the button of Louis’s trousers, and as soon as Harry unfastens them Louis finds himself flipped over, splayed out on his belly with an  _oomph._

“Jesus, warn a guy,” mutters Louis as Harry yanks his trousers down over his bum and thighs.

“Don’t have to if I don’t want to,” says Harry brightly and – well, it looks like he’s deciding to be in charge after all. Louis can’t see him anymore, but he can very clearly picture the smug grin that Harry is undoubtedly wearing at the moment.

Once Harry gets Louis’s trousers off, Louis can hear him undoing his own as well; he starts to quiver a little from the anticipation of getting Harry’s big cock inside him, because  _Jesus,_  it’s been over a week. Fuck.

“How good could you be at staying still?” Harry asks him, patting his bum lightly. His voice sounds unsure, a little bit like he’s trying to test the waters, so Louis moans and pushes his arse back, showing it off and arching his spine.

“As good as you want me to be, I guess,” he says, wiggling his arse around.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he hears Harry say, and then seconds later Harry’s wet tongue is licking around the rim of his hole.

Louis tenses up, whining, and fights the familiar urge to both push back hard onto Harry’s tongue and squirm away from it at the same time. He tries not to move at all, like Harry asked, but Harry can’t  _actually_  expect him not to move around while he’s getting licked out. And Harry’s so _good_  at it, too, sucking kisses over his hole while he tongues at the rim and pushes the tip of his tongue barely inside – Harry’s lucky Louis isn’t thrashing around wildly and injuring them both, honestly.

“Harry – fuck, fuck–” Louis whines, circling his hips a little and running his hands back and forth along the sheets. He always does this when Harry rims him, has to move some other body part in order to stop the urge to rut forward into empty air.

Harry pulls off of his hole with an obscene slurping noise that has Louis keening at the cold air that bathes his wet skin. “I said stay still.”

“I saw it as more of a suggestion, really,” says Louis cheekily, grinning into the sheets. If Harry wants to actually dom him, he’s going to have to be a bit more specific and forceful, not unlike how Louis himself is with Harry on other nights.

“Mmm,” says Harry noncommittally, then reaches over to his discarded trousers and rustles around in them. Louis can’t see him, but as Harry grabs both of his arms, pulls his elbows together behind his back, and mutters,  _“Incarcerous,”_  he figures that Harry must’ve been going for his wand. Louis gasps and winces as ropes burst from the tip of Harry’s wind and bind his arms tightly together behind his back. He tries to move his arms experimentally, and finds that they’re bound as tightly as they can be without actually hurting him.

“That should help,” says Harry, smoothing one large hand over Louis’s arse cheek. “But if you move again I’m – I’m going to punish you.”

Louis snorts. He can’t imagine Harry actually going through with it.

“You think I’m joking,” Harry says. It isn’t a question.

“No, no, sorry, carry on,” says Louis, trying to suppress the laughter in his voice.

Harry doesn’t respond to this, just lowers his head back down, tickling the dimples above Louis’s bum with his curls before he sets back to eating Louis out. He grips Louis’s arse with both hands this time, spreading his cheeks apart so he can get in deep and fit his entire mouth around Louis’s hole, rubbing at it with his lips and tongue.

“Oh god,” Louis moans, trying his very best to stay still. It’s impossible, though, because the more he focuses on staying still, the less of an outlet he has for all of the pleasure he’s receiving, so it seems much more intense and builds up much quicker than it usually does. Harry’s tongue pushes inside him, warm and wet and wriggling, and Louis can’t help but sob a little and spread his legs as Harry’s teeth catch teasingly on his rim. Reflexively, Louis tries to get a hand on himself, but his arms are tightly tied and he just ends up thrashing around as Harry holds him open and mercilessly fucks him with his tongue. “Harry, Harry, fuck.”

Harry’s mouth leaves him a second later, and Louis feels like crying as he pushes his bum back, whimpering and whining to get Harry’s tongue back.

“Look at you,” Harry says. “So fucking desperate that you disobey me just to try and get off.”

Louis wants to say, “This was fun, but untie me now so I can ride your face.” He doesn’t, though, tries to stay in the moment, squirms around a little bit more.

“M’gonna punish you now,” says Harry. Louis stops moving completely, eyes wide. “Gonna spank you ’til you stop moving.”

Louis rolls his eyes. Jesus, he can stop moving any time he wants. His eyes roll completely back into his head, though, when Harry lays down the first harsh smack on his arse. Louis’s back arches obscenely at the suddenness of it, and an embarrassingly loud whine escapes from his mouth.

Harry _tsks_ at him, and Louis feels hot all over. “See, such a slut, Lou, you can’t even stay still.”

He hears Harry spit, and the next second a wet finger is circling gently around his hole. Louis moans gratefully and pushes back into it, but then yelps when Harry’s other hand spanks him again.  He buries his face in the sheets and tries to get his breathing back under control.

“I want you to thank me,” Harry tells him, moving his finger around in small circles but never pushing in.

“W-what?” Louis mumbles into the sheets. He grinds his arse back desperately to try and get Harry’s finger to push inside him.

“Thank me every time I spank you,” says Harry, and _fuck,_ he’s really starting to get into this. He hits Louis again, and at the same instant pushes a single finger inside him.

“Oh g-god,” Louis moans gratefully, bearing down on it. “Thank you _, thank you,_ fuck–”

Harry spanks him again and Louis thanks him again, his arse already hot and sore from just four hits. Harry’s finger isn’t really doing anything inside him, just  _being_  there, filling Louis up, and Louis groans as he fucks back on to it, trying to get it to hit his prostate.

“Moving so much,” Harry comments. “Guess you like to be spanked.”

That’s when Louis remembers that he’s not supposed to be moving, and he starts to wonder how he’d possibly forgotten this in such a short amount of time when Harry’s palm connects with the reddening flesh of his arse again, making Louis yelp and, a second later, thank him.

Then Harry adds another finger, making Louis moan long and low as he spreads his legs even further, silently begging for more.

“I can keep this up for a while, you know. Looks like I might need to,” says Harry.

Louis laughs, and the end of it turns into a whine as he fucks himself on two of Harry’s fingers. “I might come - before you’re finished, just warning you.”

Harry makes a noise in his throat but doesn’t respond.  He does bring his hand down again on Louis’s arse, keeping the fingers of his other hand still as Louis squeezes around them and chokes out, “T-thank you.”

“One more rule,” Harry adds, spanking him again and pausing to give Louis time to thank him. Once he does, Harry continues, “I want you to tell me when you’re close to coming.”

Louis nods into the sheets, gasping and incoherent as he finally manages to rock back at an angle that brushes Harry’s fingers against his prostate. “Fuck, yeah, fuck, fuck–”

Harry strikes him again, the sound echoing loudly in the empty room as heat and pain bloom in Louis’s arse and travel straight to his hard, dripping cock. Louis moans, his thighs shaking as he struggles to keep the angle that has Harry’s fingers hitting that spot inside him every time Louis pushes back.

“Thank you,” he gasps, rolling his hips and taking Harry’s fingers as deep as he can.

“I should stop,” says Harry. “S’posed to be a punishment.”

“No, no, don’t stop,” Louis pleads, pushing his arse up and keening happily when Harry smacks him again. “God, don’t stop, I’m so close–”

“Yeah?” asks Harry, hitting him again.

“Thank you,” whimpers Louis. “Thank you, thank you, oh, fuck, m’gonna–”

Harry abruptly draws his fingers out of him and stops spanking him, leaving Louis teetering right on the edge of coming but lacking anything to push him over. Harry grips his hips, also leaving him unable to get off against the bed.

“No no no,” Louis whines in desperate frustration, “no, Harry, please,  _please–”_

“Shhh,” Harry shushes him. He smoothes one large hand over Louis’s bum, and his hand feels cool against Louis’s achingly hot skin. “Wanna make you feel good, Lou.”

“Then make me  _come,”_  says Louis, annoyance creeping into his voice.

“Shhh,” Harry says again, and Louis almost sobs with frustration. He hears voices, then, and it must be Tom and Max coming up to turn in for the night. Luckily, the curtains around their – well, Harry’s – bed have already been closed, but he does hear Harry reach for his wand and murmur, _“Muffliato.”_

“You can be as loud as you want now,” Harry tells him, settling back down and talking right up against Louis’s hole. “Not that that was stopping you before, but.”

Louis chuckles weakly, trying not to dwell on the fact that he’s tied up and being eaten out meters away from the two other unsuspecting boys. He  _tries_  not to think about that, but it’s just too hot not to, and he cries out loudly when Harry’s tongue finds his hole again. It’s too much too soon, right after being edged, and he tries to squirm away but Harry doesn’t let him, just holds him open and licks in deep.

“Oh  _god,_  no, nnnn,” Louis pleads, not even sure what he’s asking for, just thrashing his shoulders around and hiding his face. Harry moans, vibrating right against his hole, and  _fuck,_  it feels  _so good_  – it always feels good, yeah, but this is something else entirely, something Louis has never felt before, some sort of urgent desperation for Harry’s touch in every cell of his body.

Harry’s fucking him with his tongue now, pushing it in and out like it’s one of his fingers, but it’s  _warm_  and wet and pliant and Louis feels like he’s going to pass out. His cock is starting to actually hurt from how much he wants to come – he’s not used to being denied like this, because this is something he’s always done to Harry, not the other way around.

“Fuck, yeah, fuck me,  _god,”_  he moans, pushing back into Harry’s hands and mouth. Harry didn’t really give him any time to come down from the edge, so Louis finds himself climbing back up to orgasm very, very quickly. Harry’s lips are hot and smooth around the sensitive rim of his hole, and it’s so good, fuck, it’s so good. “Yeah, make me come, Harry,  _fuck,_  so close–”

And then Harry pulls off, pressing a sloppy kiss to Louis’s hole as he draws away, and Louis very nearly screams in frustration. He strains wildly against his bonds, the ropes cutting into his skin as he struggles to break them, but Harry holds his hips tightly and all of Louis’s efforts end up being in vain.

Louis fights for as long as he can, but there comes a point in time where he can literally  _feel_  the urge to fight and fidget leave his body, and he drops his shoulders, chest, and head to the bed like a puppet with its strings cut. He groans quietly into the sheets, a low, pained sound.

“There you go,” Harry says softly, stroking over his reddened arse.

Louis can feel tears prickling at the back of his eyes from how…  _open_  he feels, how exposed and laid out bare, but he’s already cried more than enough these past few weeks, and so he focuses all of his energy into staving off those tears. All of the emotion that’s welling up inside him takes a different outlet, then, in the form of “Harry, Harry, Harry” falling from his lips over and over without his control.

“Gonna feel so good,” Harry murmurs, soothing, “gonna be so good for you, Lou.”

“Please, Harry, Harry,  _please,”_  begs Louis, all the fight drained out of him as he lays still for Harry. He can only hope Harry will let him come now that he’s doing what Harry wanted.

The noise Louis makes is most definitely not human when Harry finally,  _finally_  pushes a finger – now wet with lube, which Harry must’ve Summoned – inside him, and Louis clenches down greedily, trying to draw his finger further in, get him deeper. He – god, he wants Harry  _everywhere,_  all over him and around him and inside him, so much so that it makes his stomach hurt and his veins ache.

Harry moves his finger right away this time so that all Louis can do is lay there and take it – which works out nicely, because that’s all Louis wants to do at the moment. He holds himself as still as he can, wanting to be good for Harry, and lets out a pleased moan when Harry rewards him with another slick finger.

“Take it so well,” says Harry, a proud edge to his voice that makes Louis preen and try to stay even more still in the hopes of getting more praise. Harry spreads his fingers apart to stretch Louis out, shoves them in deep and curls them to catch his prostate.

“Oh god,” Louis groans, his thighs shaking from the strain of holding himself up without his arms. His eyes roll back into his head when Harry keeps stroking at his prostate insistently, filling him up with his thick, long fingers and forcing precome out of his painfully hard cock in a slow, slick dribble. “Harry,  _fuck,_  um, um–”

“Getting close again?” Harry asks quietly, pushing in a third finger alongside the other two.

“Shit,” Louis swears, his body being rocked back and forth as Harry pumps his fingers in and out, “shit, yeah, i-if you keep – doing that, yeah–”

“Mmm.” Harry moves his fingers faster, aiming for Louis’s prostate and pressing into it with his fingertips every time he pushes in.

“Oh – god, fuck, you h- _have_  to let me come, Harry, please –  _fuck,_  fuck, Harry, ’m gonna come, I’m–”

“Not yet,” says Harry, and he draws his fingers out slowly, so slowly that Louis sobs and breaks his good behavior by pushing his arse back, trying to chase Harry’s fingers as he pulls them out.

The urge to cry is even stronger now, but even as Louis lets out a loud wail at being denied orgasm for the  _third time,_  he refuses to cry, chants Harry’s name like a mantra instead,  _Harry_  mixed with  _please_  and the occasional desperate curse. Even so, he can feel tears pooling in his eyes from how overwhelmed he is, and he certainly doesn’t want to think about the variety of reasons behind those tears, the least of which being that he  _needs_  Harry right now in a way that he hasn’t permitted himself to feel until this very moment.

Harry slaps him on the arse once, hard, and Louis quiets immediately, stilling and shivering. “I’m gonna fuck you now, babe,” Harry says, and Louis perks up when he hears Harry slicking up his cock, “and if you’re good and stay still I’ll let you come right before I do.”

“I’ll be good,” Louis blurts out immediately, leagues past shame. “I’ll be so good, please, just–”

“You’d better,” Harry tells him, lining himself up, “else I’m not letting you come at all.”

Louis keens, and Harry chooses that moment to push himself inside.

It’s only been a week since they’ve done this, but Louis somehow managed to forget in that short period of time how  _big_  Harry’s cock is and how good it feels filling him up.

“Fuck, you’re tight,” Harry swears, smacking him on the arse again and making Louis gasp and clench up even more snugly around him.

“Ohhh - oh my god–”

Harry doesn’t waste any time, skipping past his usual teasing and going straight for Louis’s prostate. Louis hiccups a little with every brutal thrust in, his cock swinging untouched in between his legs as Harry pounds into him mercilessly.

“F-fuck, god,  _fuck–”_

“S’that what you need?” Harry breathes, slapping his other arse cheek. “Need my cock?”

“Yeah,” Louis cries, his body rocking back and forth every time Harry brings their bodies flush together. “Yeah, please, please, n-need–”

“Need to come?”

Louis really,  _really_  does, and he can feel his balls tightening up, drawing in close to his body as he hurtles toward the edge. “Mmm, fuck – oh, fuck me, I’m coming–”

Just like that, one of Harry’s hands wraps itself quickly and firmly around the base of Louis’s swollen cock, and the orgasm that Louis had actually been able to feel starting is stopped abruptly. It hurts, it fucking  _hurts,_  Harry squeezing him so tight that he’s literally unable to come, and Louis lets out a desperate, animalistic noise very close to a scream.

“You don’t like that?” Harry asks innocently, the pulse of his hips a dirty, sharp contrast to the tone of his voice, the way his hand grips Louis’s cock authoritatively.

“No, no, n-no no no,  _Harry,”_  Louis cries, unable at this point to articulate what he wants because he wants it  _that badly._  His whole body feels like a slingshot pulled all the way back, the pleasure and painful desire to come turning him into a shivering, moaning, incoherent mess. He’s too far gone to even think about struggling, though, knowing only Harry can give him what he needs now, and so he just takes it, his mouth falling open but no sound coming out as Harry’s other hand comes up and pushes down between his shoulderblades. Louis lets himself be pressed into the bed, loving the way it brings his arse up further, loving how slutty it makes him feel, being underneath Harry like this.

The bed’s starting to rock back and forth now from the force of the pounding he’s taking, and it’s something no  _Muffliato_  spell can hide.  It makes Louis feel even dirtier – he feels positively filthy with Harry’s hands all over him, Harry’s perfect cock in his arse, Harry’s lips whispering dirty words of praise, and – everyone else  _knows what they’re doing –_

“Harry,” he cries again, stupidly, the only word he knows.

“You  _have_  been good,” says Harry contemplatively, slowing down and pressing his cock in fully, grinding his hips and rubbing against Louis’s prostate. Louis gasps and reflexively tries to arch his back, but finds that his back is already literally bent as far as it will go. He squeezes his eyes shut tightly against the surge of feelings welling up in him, the  _trust_  he puts in Harry to take care of him like this and – and –

“Harry,” he whines, softly, brokenly, a lone tear escaping from his right eye and sliding down his cheek.

“I’ve got you,” he hears Harry say. Then Harry’s relaxing his grip on Louis’s cock and starting to stroke him up and down, up and down, and at the same instant he starts to fuck Louis hard again, pistoning his hips in and out and bruising Louis’s arse with his hipbones.

It only takes maybe ten seconds of this for Louis to get back on the verge of orgasm, and this time he thinks he might actually start sobbing if Harry doesn’t let him come. He babbles something incoherent – it might not even be words – but Harry gets the picture, murmurs, “You can come now, Lou, s’alright,” gently, in sharp contrast to the rough way his body is moving.

Not five seconds after Harry gives him permission to come, Louis shoots off with a loud, relieved cry, his legs shaking wildly as his cock spurts thick streams of come over his belly and the sheets, and – there’s so  _much_  of it, god, because Harry just kept building him up and building him up, and he’s spilling all of it – it goes on for so  _long,_  too, so long that he’s still coming when Harry stills inside him with a low groan and fills his insides with warmth.

When Louis’s orgasm is finally finished, he just lays there, held up solely by Harry’s hands on his hips, and lets himself float in the weird haze of contentment and warmth that he’s found himself in. His mind is a clean, blank slate save for one word,  _Harry,_  and he smiles into the sheets as Harry touches him, rubbing his thumbs over the dimples at the bottom of Louis’s spine.

Louis is so pleasantly out of it that he doesn’t even remember that he’s tied up until Harry is whispering  _Finite Incantatem,_  and it becomes suddenly apparent to him that he has arms and they’re sore. He whimpers, but even the slight pain isn’t enough to pull him down from where he’s floating in the clouds.

Harry makes a soothing noise and starts to massage Louis’s arms, sharp little pinpricks of sensation gradually pouring back into them. He pulls out after a minute, and then Louis whimpers happily at the warm mess of come and lube he feels sliding out of his hole and down over his balls and the back of his thigh. He’s generally always thought that it was gross, feeling come inside him after it was over, but now it’s absurdly wonderful, a warm reminder that Harry’s been inside him. It makes him feel closer to Harry, but – not close enough –

“Need to see you,” Louis murmurs, not sure why he’s suddenly become this needy and not yet possessing the full range of motion necessary to move his own body.

He feels Harry lay down next to him, and then big, gentle hands are turning him over and maneuvering him onto Harry’s chest. Louis doesn’t usually like to be manhandled, but apparently the present moment is an exception to all of his rules.

Louis rests his head on Harry’s chest and curls into his side, flinging his arms over him and tangling his legs with Harry’s. He feels like he can’t get close enough, but the deep-set restlessness he’d felt earlier in the day is gone, replaced with a boneless feeling of completion.

“I feel clingy,” he mumbles into Harry’s sweaty skin.

“S'normal,” says Harry, rubbing up and down Louis’s sore arms, “I think. At least for me, it is. You’re all right, though?”

“Mmhmm,” Louis sighs contentedly, nuzzling into Harry further. He feels like all of the awkwardness they’d experienced earlier in the week has been erased, like everything’s back to normal, and it’s a wonderful feeling. He’s – actually, there are very few times he’s ever felt this good before in his  _life._  Maybe Louis should let Harry do this more often, honestly. “Thanks, babe, it was really good.”

“I’m still surprised you wanted to,” says Harry, drawing the covers up over them both.

“I’m glad we did,” Louis tells him, and it’s a bit more honest than he intended to be, but he means it very much.

“Mmm,” murmurs Harry. “I am too.” Louis can feel Harry’s voice rumbling in his chest and lets it lull him closer to sleep. Now that all of the adrenaline keeping him alert and hyperactive the entire day is gone, he’s crashing, and  _hard._  Harry’s skin is warm and his voice is soothing, and Louis yawns against his nipple and snuggles in closer as Harry laughs quietly.

As Louis feels himself drift off to sleep, he thinks to himself that he should probably confirm with Harry tomorrow that they're going to the Yule Ball tomorrow, just to be sure. They seem - he and Harry seem  _better_  now, at least to Louis - he feels a lot closer to Harry now.

Louis is almost asleep when Harry whispers, “Lou, are you still awake? I still need to tell you something.”

Louis considers answering; Harry probably knows that he’s awake, can probably feel it in his heartbeat, but Louis had completely forgotten about the fact that Harry has something he wants to tell him, and he’s just as uneager as before to hear about it. So, instead, he pretends to be asleep, clinging a little tighter to Harry and keeping his breathing steady while he tries to calm his suddenly racing heartbeat. If Harry notices, he doesn’t say anything, just thumbs over Louis’s shoulder a bit more, and then the two of them drift off to sleep, listening to each other’s breathing.

xxx

The next morning, Louis is jostled awake by Harry's gangly limbs as the other boy moves about next to him. Last night's events come rushing back to Louis and he sighs happily at the lingering, pleasant soreness in his bum, both inside and out.  Feeling cuddly, Louis blindly searches Harry out but frowns once his bare skin rubs against cloth and he discovers that Harry is already dressed.

"Hazza?" he mumbles, blinking his eyes open blearily.

"Hey, Lou," says Harry, sounding slightly guilty. "I didn't mean to wake you."

Louis's eyes come in to focus and he finds that Harry is sitting up, pulling on his favorite pair of worn brown boots.

"Where're you going?" Louis asks, reaching out sleepily to tug on a corner of Harry's coat. The bed is starting to succumb to the chill of the castle without Harry's warm, naked body pressed against Louis's. Louis doesn't like that at  _all_ , wants to throw a fit until Harry strips all of his clothes back off and gets back into bed with him and snuggles with him and touches him and maybe gives him a massage. (It's possible Louis may still be feeling a _bit_  needy after last night's activities.)

"I, um," Harry says, "I'm meeting Nick to go shopping."

Louis doesn't understand. "At this hour? What  _time_  is it?"

"It's eleven."

"Oh." Louis frowns and lets his brain mull this over. After several seconds, he asks, "Why're you going shopping?"

"We're, uh. We’re buying dress robes," says Harry slowly, finally getting the second boot on. He's still facing away from Louis.

"You already have dress robes," Louis tells him a bit hysterically, because he thinks he may know where this is headed and he already feels like he's swallowed poison.

"Nick wanted to get, um, matching dress robes," says Harry, gulping, "because he asked me to the Yule Ball last night, and. Well. I said yes."

Louis feels like he might be sick, like – like an icy cold fist has taken hold of his heart and  _torn_  it clean out of his chest. In the ensuing silence, Harry stands up, turning around and looking at Louis carefully. Louis doesn't want Harry to look into his eyes, doesn't want to be that vulnerable, so he averts them, trying to make sure his bottom lip doesn't tremble.

"Are you-" Harry starts.

"Fine, yeah, I'm great, happy for you," Louis mumbles mechanically. He looks back up at Harry and is startled to see a regretful look of affirmation in his eyes, like whatever Louis just said has confirmed something for Harry.

"Right," says Harry, casting his eyes quickly to the floor. "Well, if you're alright, then-"

"Of course I'm alright," snaps Louis. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Harry's face falls. "I don't-"

"Jesus, I'm so fucking okay with this," Louis spits, raising his voice as he sits up. "It's illegal in ten bloody countries how much I  _don't care._  Go on, go shopping."

"Louis-" Harry stammers, his entire body starting to crumple.

"Nick's waiting, Harry," Louis yells, a hysterical edge to his voice.  _"Go."_

Harry just stands there, frozen, staring at him with wide, hurt eyes.

"Harry,  _go,"_  shouts Louis, his body flashing cold then hot all over. "Get  _out!"_

Harry gives a small sob and then turns to leave, rushing out of the dormitory with a hurt sound as his boots echo on the stone stairs.

Louis glares after him, his eyes burning.  He angrily draws the curtains back around the bed once Harry's footsteps have faded.

"Some of us are still trying to sleep, are you done out there?" comes Tom Parker's voice from the bed across the room.

"Go fuck yourself," Louis snaps, laying back down. He tries to calm himself and go back to sleep, but he can't seem to stop shaking, and for some reason he absolutely can't let himself think about, his pillow is rapidly dampening with tears.

xxx

When Louis next wakes up, his lashes are clumped together. He rubs hastily at them, swallowing heavily around the lump in his throat, and tries not to think about the fact that he had been intending to ask Harry to the Yule Ball today because it's obviously too late for that.

His watch tells him that it's half-two in the afternoon; at three, he's meant to meet with Draco to start the next step of the _Felix Felicis_ that they've been working on. It's a very important step - they have to transfer the potion from the pewter cauldron they've been brewing it in to a new, solid gold cauldron, which will lend some of the gold's properties to the potion. It sounds simple, but Draco has assured Louis that it's actually very difficult.

Louis eventually manages to drag himself out of bed and trudges over to the bathroom, wiping at his eyes as he goes. Stan is just coming out of the showers glad in a green-and-silver striped towel as Louis walks over to the sinks to splash some water on his face.

"Hey, mate," says Stan, waving at him. He pauses a few feet away from Louis and scratches hesitantly at the back of his neck. "Everything alright?"

"Yeah, fine," Louis says curtly. Stan probably heard them earlier. He avoids his friend's stare by vigorously rubbing at his wet face with a towel.

"O-kay," says Stan slowly, who's clearly not going to press it. Louis loves Stan. "So, what are you up to today?"

"Well, I have to go work on the Liquid Luck potion with Draco," Louis tells him, "but I, um, I don't have any plans after that. D'you want to hang out later?"

"Maybe," says Stan. Louis blanches and Stan amends hastily, "no, I  _do_  want to, mate, it's just - I asked El to the Yule Ball last night, see, because I figured neither of us were going with anybody else, and she said she'd only go with me if my waistcoat matched her dress."

He pauses, and Louis gives a supportive eye roll. Inside, though, Louis’s stomach has started churning in absolute terror at the thought that he's going to be the only person at the Yule Ball without a date.

"I know, right," Stan continues, oblivious to Louis's inner turmoil, "so she's Flooing us to her parents' house in like an hour, and they're going to take us shopping in Paris today."

 _"Paris?"_  asks Louis incredulously. "For - it's only a  _school dance_ , for Christ's sake!"

Stan nods. "Bloody posh, she is. But, hey, her parents are paying, so I get free dress robes out of it!"

"Nice," says Louis weakly, giving Stan as big of a smile as he can manage.

When Stan leaves, though, Louis drops the smile from his face and looks at himself in the mirror. His eyes are slightly bloodshot, and the skin around them is puffy, like he's been spending a considerable amount of time crying, which. Well.

He splashes some more cold water on his face, hoping it'll make his eyelids seem less swollen, and then strips his boxer briefs off so he can get in the shower. Draco might be the only other person he interacts with for the rest of the day, after all, so he can't go to his office looking like a _complete_  piece of shit.

xxx

Louis arrives at Draco's office at 3:10 - ten minutes late, which is very unlike him.

The delay can be traced back to the fact that Louis took ten minutes longer to get dressed than he normally does; he had originally put on a soft, turquoise cable-knit sweater to go with his skinny jeans, but then when he was checking his appearance in the mirror he’d remembered that Harry had once said that it brought out the blue in his eyes. For some unfathomable reason, this recollection had made Louis extremely upset, and he’d hastily pulled off the sweater and thrown it onto the floor, staring at it accusingly like it had personally wronged him.

Absurdly, he'd felt more tears well up in his eyes, and that - that was stupid, he had been  _sure_  he was all out - so, in an effort to pull himself the fuck together, Louis had slapped himself full across the face.

The slap succeeded in mostly getting rid of his self-pity, at least for the time being, but then he’d had to wait for the bright red handprint on his face to fade before he left his dorm. In the meantime, he had ended up putting the sweater back on,  _only_  because it was really comfortable and Louis himself liked the color.

"Afternoon, Louis," says Draco from his work bench. He's wearing his usual button-down and slacks combo, with the unusual addition of a pair of thick, golden gloves.

"A bit chilly, is it?" Louis asks him, walking over. It  _is_  cold in the dungeons, and he finds himself pulling the sleeves of his sweater down so he can cocoon his hands inside them.

"Hmm?" Draco hums. "Oh, these? You'll need a pair as well. They're made out of dragon hide to withstand the extreme temperatures we're brewing this at, and they're also coated in gold particles."

"Cool," says Louis, taking the pair of gloves Draco offers him. "So, we're just transferring the potion into a gold cauldron? Doesn't seem too hard."

Draco chuckles. "It's actually a bitch and a half. We have to use a new sterile pipette," he holds up a collection of individually-wrapped golden tubes, "for every 50 milliliters we transfer, and we have to wait five minutes for the potion to acclimate to the gold in the pipette before we transfer it to the new cauldron, or else it might react badly."

Louis frowns. That  _does_  sound like a bitch.

"Remember, we can do this any time in the next week," Draco reminds him. "We've got a nice window. You're  _sure_  you want to do this today? It is a Sunday, after all."

Louis thinks bitterly that he doesn't have anything else to do today, so. "Yeah, let's do it," he says, forcing a smile onto his face. "No time like the present."

"Alright, get your gloves on," Draco instructs. Louis pulls on the heavy gloves. "Now, we have this pipette bulb," he holds up a gold-coated rubber stopper, "That we're going to use to draw the potion into these pipettes."

"Old-fashioned," remarks Louis. Usually they siphon up potions using their wands.

"Old-fashioned and necessary," Draco adds. He unwraps one of the sterile pipettes and fits the bulb over the open end. "I'm going to have you try it first. Draw it up slowly." He hands Louis the pipette and points to the cauldron of bubbling, currently-silver liquid.

Louis squeezes the pipette bulb and dips the tip into the potion slowly, flinching as it hisses a bit. He looks questioningly at his professor, who frowns slightly but motions for him to continue. Louis relaxes his grip on the bulb ever so slightly, drawing about 10 mL of potion into the pipette. The potion hisses even more and then, ominously, it begins to pop and crackle inside the pipette.

Draco swears and grabs the pipette out of Louis’s hands, practically sprinting across the room with it until he finds an empty beaker. He then quickly squeezes the bulb, forcing the sizzling liquid out into the beaker.

"I guess that's not normal," Louis says meekly. Quite unnecessarily, too, because the potion has turned a deep, ugly black and now has the consistency and stench of tar.

"Not at all," gasps Draco, throwing the pipette into a bin. "Mother of Merlin, that's - that's the strongest reaction I've ever seen."

"Reaction?" Louis asks, stepping neatly away from the cauldron containing the rest of the potion.

"I should've mentioned this before," Draco says, "but to complete this step of the potion, you have to be in a good mood _. Felix Felicis_ is very sensitive to that sort of thing, and - I would've said something, but I figured - well, your birthday's coming up, and so is Christmas, and the Yule Ball, and you're off classes, so - I guess I just assumed you'd be happy. I’m sorry."

"I'm fine," Louis tells him, frowning. He  _should_  be happy - he's turning 18 in three days, and it's the holidays. What's _wrong_ with him?

"You most certainly are not fine," replies Draco, gesturing to the beaker containing the thick, black potion, which is now giving off smoke. "You're either extremely sad or extremely angry, or you're - oh, did somebody close to you pass away? I'm so sorry-"

"No," Louis cuts him off, "no,  _Jesus_ , no one's  _died,_  I - I'm just not, um, feeling very well."

"Do you - do you want to talk about it?" Draco asks him. "There has to be some way I can help."

"Oh my god, no, just drop it," Louis says sharply, feeling embarrassed, humiliated, and  _lost_  all at once.

"Louis-"

"I don't want to talk about it!" snaps Louis, standing up and pulling off the gold gloves. "I - fuck,  _fuck,_  there's nothing to talk about, okay, just-"

He cuts himself off before he starts actually shouting, and Draco doesn't reply, just stares at him wide-eyed.

"Christ, I'll just come back later." With that, Louis turns on his heel and walks quickly out of the room, trying to ignore the pity he'd seen in his professor's eyes.

He hurries through the corridors, not even sure where his feet are taking him. He passes many other students milling about the castle with nowhere to go because it's not a Hogsmeade weekend.

 _Didn't stop Nick and Harry,_  Louis thinks before he can stop himself. He feels his lower lip tremble but steels himself against the sadness, trying to find a corner or an alcove not already occupied by a happy group of students. Finally, he finds one, a little nook tucked behind a suit of armor near Gryffindor Tower. He ducks into the small space, sitting down and resting his head on his knees, and this -  _this_  is the worst he's ever felt.

Louis feels something - some knowledge, a truth that he's tried  _so_  hard to smother and ignore for the past four years, and he'd  _succeeded_ until recently but now everything's gone to shit and he can  _feel_  it, feel it unlocking inside his chest and flooding into his heart, and it hurts  _so much_ -

"Louis?"

Louis looks up, forcing his unwelcome thoughts back into the dark recesses of his mind. Niall is standing there, all bundled up in red and gold, clearly on his way somewhere from the Gryffindor dormitories.

Louis tries to greet him like a normal human being, but all he's able to get out is, "N-Niall," before his throat closes up and he has to fight back tears again.

"Woah, woah, hey," says Niall, his facial expression instantly changing as he steps behind the suit of armor and sits down next to Louis. Louis wants to push him away but, at the same time, also wants to lean on Niall's shoulder and have a good cry. He really misses his mum.

"What's up?" Niall asks him, knocking their shoulders together encouragingly.

Louis feels his lower lip trembling again. "Um," he starts, but that's all he's able to say before he lets out a noise embarrassingly close to a wounded animal and feels tears start to slide unbidden down his cheeks.

"Hey, shhh," Niall soothes him, wrapping a warm arm around his shoulders. He lets Louis have a few minutes to compose himself, and Louis eventually does, never letting himself devolve into full-on sobs.

"I'm," Louis tries eventually, "I'm not having a very good day."

"I'll say," Niall says. "You know what you need? A pick-me-up. You can tell me all about it if you want, but you don't have to - we can just have a few drinks if you want."

That - that sounds  _really_  good to Louis, actually. But - "Surely you were going somewhere?" he asks, not wanting to inconvenience Niall.

"I was gonna go hang out with Ellie," says Niall, "but I think she can probably find other stuff to do for a couple of hours."

Louis still feels bad. "You don't have to-"

"Shh," Niall shushes. He pulls out his wand and says clearly,  _"Expecto Patronum!"_

An excited silver terrier emerges from the tip of Niall's wand.

"Ran into Louis and he wanted to talk," Niall tells the dog. "I'll catch up with you in a couple hours. Sorry, love."

Niall then waves his wand, causing the terrier to scamper through the stone wall behind them.

"Is everyone able to do that but me?" Louis asks miserably as they get up.

"What, make a Patronus?" asks Niall.

"No, I can produce a Patronus, of course, I just can't get it to - talk, or whatever," says Louis.

"It takes a lot of practice," Niall admits, leading the way along the corridor.

They walk in silence for a bit before Louis realizes something. "Hold on - where are we going to get drinks? It's not a Hogsmeade weekend."

Niall laughs. "Nick Grimshaw's not the only one who knows all of Hogwarts' secret passages."

xxx

Fifteen minutes later, Louis and Niall emerge from a secret trapdoor into Honeyduke's cellar. Once they get outside, Louis shivers, realizing only now that he's just wearing a sweater, and quickly casts a Warming Charm around himself. He's thoroughly surprised when Niall turns right, instead of left, upon exiting the store.

"We're not going to the Three Broomsticks?" Louis asks, hurrying to keep up.

"Nah," Niall replies. "I reckon you need something a bit stronger than what Tom has available."

Louis only understands what Niall means when he realizes that their ultimate destination is the Hog's Head, a pub he's heard of but never gone to.

"Do you go here often?" he asks Niall as they file through the doorway.

"Sure, I try to pop down every weekend," Niall tells him. "The owner's a friend of m'dad's, I’ve known him since I was in nappies."

Once they're ensconced at a corner table, each with a drink that Louis is pretty sure contains at least five different kinds of liquor, Niall only needs to  _look_  at Louis in that friendly, understanding way of his before Louis is spilling everything to him - the recent events that have transpired with Harry and Nick, the fact that he thought he was Muggleborn but just found out he isn't, the story of how he and Harry first met, and, fuck it, even the fact that he let Harry dom him last night for the first time  _ever_  and then Harry left him cold and alone this morning.

After he's got it all out, Louis downs half of the absurdly strong drink in one gulp, feeling even more miserable than before.

“Holy shit,” says Niall, whistling as he sips at his own drink.  “I had no idea any of that was going on, mate – you two always seemed so happy.”

Louis shrugs sadly. “Harry wasn’t happy with how we were, I guess.”

Niall shakes his head. “That’s a load of crock and you know it, Lou.”

“No, seriously,” says Louis. “You should’ve seen how upset he was when he found out I slept with Greg James back over the summer.”

“I mean… t’be fair, I don’t him being pissed about that should’ve come as a surprise to anyone, ‘specially you,” says Niall.

“What d’you mean?”

Niall looks at Louis strangely. “Do you – do you seriously not know? You left it out of the little story y’just told me, but I figured it was implied–”

 _“What?”_ Louis asks, impatient.

"The part where Harry's in love with you."

Louis chokes.

"Merlin, Louis, I thought you knew,” Niall tells him, looking at him strangely.

"I," says Louis. He can't think of anything else to follow it up with, so he takes another frenzied gulp as his mind churns. "I don't know why he would be."

"Don't be daft, you're a catch," says Niall. "You should see the way he looks at you. It's like - it's like nobody else even matters to him when you're around."

Louis doesn't want to hear him, wants to stick his fingers in his ears and shake his head back and forth. "He - he wouldn't want me-"

"Why not?" Niall presses.

Louis thinks. He thinks about the first time he and Harry met, how Harry had seemed blind to the revulsion that had gripped every other Slytherin due to Louis's presence at their table. He remembers wondering when Harry was going to realize that he could be spending time with people much cooler than Louis, better than Louis, richer and purer of blood and funnier than Louis and, since their friendship took a sexual turn, more attractive than Louis.

He thinks about the fact that he's buried a _fear_ for seven years, a fear that he's not good enough for Harry and for their friendship, and - and if he's not good enough to even be  _friends_  with Harry, then he's in no  _way_  good enough to be in a relationship with Harry. Harry would - Harry would leave him eventually, this is something Louis thought he knew for certain, knew that Harry would figure out one day how much better he could do than Louis, whose mum can barely afford to send him to Hogwarts and whose father knew he didn't want Louis even before he was born.

And suddenly Louis realizes why he’s so afraid of being rejected by Harry if that were ever to happen, because – because he can’t handle that happening because of how much Harry _means_ to him, and –

Louis doesn't realize he's crying until Niall's wiping the tears off of his face with a coarse pub napkin. "Oh god - Niall, oh god, oh god-"

"Shh," Niall tries to soothe him, scooting closer to him.

But Louis isn't having it, can't stop his feelings once they've broken free from their hold, and he holds his face in his hands as he stammers out, "Niall - Niall, oh no oh no oh _no.”_

“What’s wrong?” asks Niall, his voice thick with concern. “Well, uh – besides all of the things you just told me.”

“H-he's all I care about,” Louis sniffs, pulling at his own hair, “he's - he's all I've e-ever wanted, but I'm not - fuck, oh _no,_ Niall,  _fuck, I'm in love with Harry."_

It feels odd to say those words, feels foreign yet extremely  _right_  on his tongue. Louis wants to throw himself off a cliff.

"Well, there you go," says Niall, patting him on the shoulder. "That doesn't seem so bad."

"No," wails Louis, trying to keep his voice down as best he can, "no, it's awful, because he's finally  _done_  it, hasn't he, he's finally found someone b-better than me-"

"Who, Nick Grimshaw?" asks Niall. "Bit of a prat, if you ask me-"

"N-not if you ask H-Harry," Louis blubbers, downing the rest of his drink as quickly as he can. "I've - I've fucked things up so m-much, Niall, I just - it's all my fault, and I d-dunno if there's any, like, recovering f-from this."

Niall doesn't say anything for a bit. Louis finishes Niall's drink as well.

Finally, Niall says, “I haven't known you guys for too long, but I'm pretty sure you two can recover from anything.”

Louis sniffs and doesn’t reply, but he leans his head on Niall’s shoulder.

“You guys are, like… you seem like you’re _supposed_ to be together, you know? Anything else just seems weird.  But we'll just have to wait and see. Another drink?"

Louis nods, wiping his nose on another napkin.

"Comin' right up," says Niall gently, pulling him into a light hug before he gets up and makes his way back to the bar. And so Louis sits there, waiting for Niall to bring him more alcohol in which to drown his sorrows, sits there alone in the middle of a dimly-lit pub surrounded by strangers while, somewhere, Nick and Harry are shopping happily for dress robes together, having much more fun without Louis, a pathetic, lost, undeserving little boy who didn't know how lucky he was to have Harry until Harry slipped right through his fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :'(


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zayn comforts Louis, confronts Harry, and discovers something important about himself at the Yule Ball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!

"I feel like Sunday dinner is always better than other dinners, somehow," says Liam. He and Zayn are heading back up to Zayn's common room after an even-better-than-usual Sunday dinner.

"It's usually like an apology," Zayn tells him. "Like, 'hey, sorry you've got a rough week ahead, please accept this peace offering of delicious food.'"

"This week's gonna be great, though, there aren't any classes and we have Christmas and the Yule Ball," Liam says. "Don't know what they were apologizing for today, honestly, but that peppermint bark was incredible so I’m not complaining.”

Zayn, whose pockets are currently weighted down with as much peppermint bark as he could stuff in them before the platter disappeared, has to agree.

"Oh, sorry, can we stop by my dorm really fast?" Liam asks when they're about halfway to Zayn's common room. "I need to grab a change of clothes for tomorrow so Niall will stop giving me shit about wearing the same jumper two days in a row."

Zayn smirks but agrees, and soon they find themselves in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady.

"Good evening, boys," she greets them. "Password?"

"Licorice Wand," says Liam. The Fat Lady swings forward, granting them entrance.

They climb the stairs to Liam's dormitory, huffing and puffing by the end of it due to the seven flights they have to trudge up.

"I think Slytherin does it the opposite," Liam had once said, "like, the first years have to climb the most stairs, and by the time you're a seventh-year, all you have to do is go up a couple steps and there's your room. We don't like to torture eleven-year-olds, though, that's what makes us different," he'd said with a joking smile.

Once they finally get up to Liam's room, they find that Niall is already sitting on his own bed, his arm around the shoulders of an extremely slumped, dejected-looking Louis.

"It's too early to go to sleep, Lou," Niall is saying, squeezing his shoulders. "See, look, here's Zaynie and Liam, we can hang out with them!"

"M’tired," says Louis, and - his voice sounds...  _different,_  sad and watery and far away. "I just wanna go to bed, but - hey, guys."

"Louis," Zayn greets him, immediately concerned. "What's wrong, love?"

"Niall - isn't - letting - me - go - to - bed," Louis tells him, hitting weakly at Niall's shoulder with each word. "I just - I'm  _so fucking tired,_  okay, and you're being a shit friend."

Niall scoffs at him, ignoring his words. "It's no use going to bed sad, Louis, you'll only feel worse. Look, maybe Li and Zayn can cheer you up. I'll let you go to bed if I see you laugh, mate, haven't seen you crack a smile all day."

Louis harrumphs and draws his knees up, wrapping his arms around them. "I'm  _fine_  now, okay, just drop it."

"What's wrong?" Zayn asks again. He's never seen Louis like this.

"Louis's had a bit of a shit day," says Niall.

"Yeah, but I, like - I'm _over_ it now, okay, I had a good cry, that's that, can we  _please_  stop talking about this," Louis says. It's not forceful, not angry, but -  _pleading,_  almost, like he's… asking for their permission, or something.

Niall gives him one last squeeze on the shoulder and gets up, and Louis immediately falls over sideways onto the four-poster bed, curling into the fetal position without a sound. This is extremely worrying to Zayn, and evidently to Niall as well, because he comes over to Zayn and whispers, "I wish I knew how to help 'im."

Zayn frowns, but before he can respond, Niall continues softly, "I found him crying behind a statue in a corridor by Gryffindor tower and then took him to the Hog's Head.  He told me - a lot of, um, stuff today. Like about the past seven years. And his parents."

Zayn nods. He already knows all of that, though, and none of it has made Louis this upset before. "Is there anything that happened in, like, the past three days? That could've made him this sad?"

"Well," Niall says, lowering his voice even more, "he, um. I'm not sure if I'm - oh, fuck it, I'm sure he'd tell you if he told  _me,_  of all people - he let Harry dom him last night?"

Zayn's jaw drops. Niall's admission comes out as kind of a question and, Zayn supposes, why _shouldn't_ it, because a lot of students at Hogwarts haven't really gotten to do that much exploring in terms of sex, preferring to stick to standard drunken hookups and frantic handjobs in one of the many nooks the castle offers. But - more importantly - holy shit -

"You're - what?" Zayn whispers, trying to keep his voice down. "You're sure?"

"That's what he said," Niall says. "I figured I was missing something big, because your reaction just now was a lot different than mine."

"He never - Louis never - lets people do that," says Zayn feebly. Where is Harry, anyway?

"Well, he's probably regretting it, then, because he also said that Harry left him this morning to go shopping with Nick because they're going to the Yule Ball together."

Zayn's throat feels heavy; he hopes he's just misheard Niall because of how quietly they're trying to talk. "They're - Louis and Harry, you mean?"

"No, Nick and Harry."

Zayn can't even control the rage and volume that seeps into his voice. "You've gotta be  _fucking_  kidding-"

"I can hear you, you know," Louis's voice interrupts him, "and I don't appreciate being talked about."

"We're just trying to figure out how to help you," Zayn tells him. Everything’s clicked, though – Niall has been helpful, at least, in unknowingly informing Zayn that Louis is going through one spectacularly terrible drop right now.

"Don't need help."

"We hate seeing you like this, Lou," pleads Zayn, starting to walk over to him. He's the only person among Liam, Niall, and himself who probably has any idea of what Louis is going through; he's never experienced it himself, but he's read about it in several books in the Restricted Section.

"Oh my god, just leave me  _alone,"_  groans Louis, rolling over to face further away from them and attempting to curl in on himself even more.

Zayn hopes he's not making a terrible mistake, but he's  _pretty_  sure that if Louis succeeds in pushing them all away he's going to be even worse off than he is now. What Louis needs right now is attention and cuddles and soothing words, even if they aren't from the person he wants to hear them from. Zayn turns around and motions for Liam and Niall to leave the room; as much as he doesn't want them to leave, he hopes that having fewer people around will encourage Louis to open up.

A very confused Liam gives him a sad-looking thumbs up and exits the room along with Niall.

"Lou?" Zayn says softly once they've gone. He crawls into bed behind Louis and watches Louis flinch away and make himself as small as possible. "S’just you and me now, love, it's okay."

"Please just let me go to sleep," Louis begs, his voice shaky. "Please, Zayn, I'm  _so tired_ , just leave me alone-"

"I can't do that, Lou," says Zayn, his voice thick as he reaches out to touch one hand to Louis's shoulder. Louis shakes him off. Determined, Zayn toes off his shoes and then wraps both of his arms tight around Louis's middle.

Louis cries out and starts thrashing to get free, feebly kicking out as he resists Zayn's care. Overcome with something startlingly similar to grief at seeing Louis this way - so reduced, so  _dimmed_  from his usual bright radiance - Zayn soldiers on, holding him tight and insisting, "Help me take care of you, please,  _please_ , Louis, you deserve to be happy-"

"No," Louis chokes out, shuddering, but his struggles lessen just the tiniest bit, his body shaking instead of flailing about.

"Yes," Zayn insists, "yes, you deserve so many good things in your life, babe, but you have to let me in first, promise?"

Louis doesn't respond to that, just gulps down a sob and continues kicking, his arms weakly straining against Zayn's hold.

"Please," Zayn begs, holding on as tight as he can. He almost feels like crying at how lost Louis's sobs sound. "Lou, I love you, I love you so much, please let me help you."

And that seems to do it, for some reason - Louis stops moving entirely and sinks pathetically into the bed, going lax in Zayn's hold as his cries, which were beginning to dwindle, start up again full-force. He's no longer trying to get away, just turning his head into Niall's pillow as his tears are dampening the fabric, and Zayn makes sure to keep talking, murmuring reassuring, kind words in Louis's ear to make sure the other boy knows he's not going anywhere.

Zayn’s only read a few chapters on the subject, but he's pretty sure one of the most important rules of bringing a sub down after a scene is making sure that they know their partner isn't going anywhere. Zayn isn't... Zayn isn't Harry, but hopefully he's a good enough substitute to at least get Louis to work his way through everything that's going on inside his head.

"Zayn," Louis wails finally, "Zee, p-please help, I can't s-stop - crying - help-"

He sounds desperate and scared, like he wants to stop but doesn't know how, and it's terrifying.

"Hey, here, turn around," Zayn murmurs, nudging at Louis's shoulders. Louis goes surprisingly easily, giving Zayn a glimpse of his red, tear-streaked face before he wraps his arms around Zayn's middle and burrows his face into Zayn's chest, continuing to cry. He's never seemed as small to Zayn as he seems now, fitting nicely under his chin and letting Zayn kiss the top of his head over and over.

After a long time, Louis quiets, still holding tightly onto Zayn and nuzzling into his now-soaked shirt. Normally, when Louis cuddles, he's a bit restless, like a cat who can't seem to find that perfect, comfy spot, but right now he's perfectly still, only moving his head to sniffle occasionally while the rest of his body remains heavy and motionless pressed into Zayn's own.

Zayn chooses his words very carefully. "Niall told me what's happened."

Louis nods. "Been a shit day." He grips onto Zayn even tighter, almost uncomfortably, but Zayn doesn't dare complain, not when Louis is relatively calm and starting to talk. "I - um - I realized some things."

"Mmm?" Zayn asks, prompting Louis to go on.

"Well, you know how I - I didn't want Harry and I to date or anything."

"Right."

"Well, I realized why.  It’s, um - I think I was afraid he would eventually find someone better than me."

Zayn's heart hurts. “There isn’t–”

"And the funny thing is-" Louis's voice breaks a little bit when he interrupts Zayn, and he tries to cover it up with a laugh- "you know what it took for me to realize - it, realize that I was afraid of h-him leaving me, was him leaving me."

That doesn't seem very funny to Zayn at all. "Louis-"

"I-" Louis cuts him off, but it seems like he doesn't have anything to say, just doesn't want to hear what Zayn has to say. "I, um, um - Niall said - Niall told me Harry was in love with me, and it - it seemed, like, so fucking  _foreign,_  like the  _concept_  of it-"

"Really?" Zayn asks, surprised. He'd always thought that Louis  _knew,_  at least, just chose not to do anything about it or acknowledge it.

"Well, yeah, I don't know, I always knew how he looked at me, like, all  _intense,_  or whatever, but I think I was fooling myself into believing that look was just - attraction, or something."

Zayn snorts. "Lou, the way _I_ looked at you when we hooked up was attraction. Harry's - the way  _he_  looks at you is in a completely different dimension."

Louis sniffles, then takes a deep breath and says, "That's kind of like what Niall said too, so, like, I was thinking about that, and about how I've always thought a little bit that I'm not -  _good_  enough for Harry, not enough to be friends with him and  _certainly_  not enough be...  _with_ him, y’know, and it's like it all just fucking clicked or something, because-"

He cuts off, gulping in air and going silent against Zayn's chest. Zayn thinks he knows what Louis is trying to say. Zayn also thinks this is one of the worst things he's ever witnessed.

"I think," Louis finally continues, in a timid, small voice that Zayn has to strain to hear, "I think I've always been a little bit - in love with him, ever since he sat next to me after we got Sorted, and it's just gotten  _worse_  over the years, like - I feel like my heart actually  _hurts,_  now, how fucked-up and cliched is that?"

"S'not supposed to feel worse," Zayn says. He's never been in love, but. He reads things. And Liam - well. It’s extremely possible that Liam could be something like that for Zayn, maybe. He'll just have to wait and see.

"B-but it did," Louis stammers, sounding like he's trying not to lose it again, "it got worse because we went about it all wrong and now it's all fucked up because I let him dom me because I'm  _stupid_  and then he  _left."_

"That's not your fault at all," Zayn is quick to say, rubbing Louis’s shoulders. Louis exhales shakily. "That - that sort of thing is supposed to be all about trust, and taking care of each other. Harry didn't - Harry didn't do that?"

He means it as a statement, but it comes out as more of a question because all the knowledge he has of this is secondhand, courtesy of Niall.

Louis nods and doesn't seem keen on saying anything else about it. Instead, he bitterly says, "Guess it wasn't what he was hoping for."

 _"Louis,"_  Zayn says, upset, holding him tighter. "None of that is your fault, I promise."

Louis doesn't say anything. Zayn sighs; at least he's talked it out, some. "Want to sleep here tonight? You were saying you were tired."

Louis shakes his head. "Don't want to sleep here. Bloody Gryffindor dorms, for Christ's sake."

Zayn smiles faintly. "Want me to walk you back to Slytherin, then?"

Louis... shakes his head again. Zayn frowns. Perhaps Louis can't stomach the thought of not sharing a bed with Harry, or the thought of simply interacting with Harry, or - perhaps what's eating at him most is the possibility that Harry might not be sleeping in the Slytherin dorms at all tonight. Zayn isn't going to ask him which it is. "Want to sleep on my couch?"

There's a pause, then Louis nods.

Zayn chuckles. "Alright, let's get moving so I can Transfigure it into a bed before you pass out on it."

"You don't have to use magic or anything," Louis insists as Zayn helps him up. "If you can just, like, lend me one of your blankets, I should be good."

Zayn sighs. "Whatever you want, Lou."

xxx

Later that night, after Louis is asleep, nestled under a thick Ravenclaw throw and propped up on some pillows on one of Zayn and Perrie's very large couches, Zayn sneaks down to his common room and bewitches the couch cushions into small, individual pillow-top mattresses.

xxx

Zayn and Liam sleep through breakfast the next day. Liam used to be a very early riser, but Zayn must be rubbing off on him (pun completely intended) because he seems to be sleeping later and later every day. In fact, Zayn actually wakes up before Liam for the first time ever, and he decides to celebrate this glorious occasion by waking Liam up with a blowjob.

After he's shimmied under the covers and gotten Liam fully hard with his mouth, he purses his lips around the head and lavishes it with little kitten licks until Liam's body jolts and he comes awake with a groan. Zayn sucks Liam off slowly, moaning when Liam's hand snakes under the warm covers to tangle in hair, and tries to take him as deep as he can. It still irks Zayn that Liam can deepthroat without even trying while he himself cannot, and he's been practically choking himself on Liam's cock to speed up the learning process every chance he gets and hoping Liam doesn't mind.

Liam generally doesn't.

It only takes a couple of minutes being enveloped by the warm tightness of Zayn's throat for Liam to come, his hand gripping tight in Zayn's messy hair and his hips stuttering upward as his back arches. Zayn doesn't think he'll ever get tired of the way Liam falls apart when he orgasms - strangely, too, he views every time he sucks Liam off as a challenge, a challenge to make the other boy as incoherent and responsive as Zayn made him the very first time he did this.

After Zayn swallows all of Liam's release, Liam pulls back the sheets and strokes his fingers over Zayn's face, clearly intending to return the favor, but after Zayn gets a hand on himself it only takes a few strokes before he's coming all over Liam's thigh with a low groan, hunched over with his face pressed into Liam's abs.

"Fuck," Liam breathes as they both come down. Zayn crawls up and lays down next to Liam, intertwining their fingers as they stare up at the top of the huge canopy bed.

"Morning," he murmurs, snuggling in and kissing the birthmark on Liam's throat.

"Mmm, good morning to me," mumbles Liam. He pulls Zayn in close and kisses the top of his head.

They lay like that for a little while, cuddling under the covers, before Zayn remembers last night's events and the fact that Louis is asleep on their couch.

"Fuck, I forgot that Lou's downstairs, I should go check on him," he says, stretching languidly.

"Is he - you don't have to tell me anything, I guess, but – is he okay?" Liam asks hesitantly as both of them climb out of bed.

"Um," Zayn starts, then realizes he doesn't really know the answer to that question. He avoids it altogether by walking into the bathroom. Liam doesn’t press it any further.

They shower and dress quickly, managing to ignore each other's wet, naked bodies just this once (their showers have, in recent weeks, started to become hour-plus long affairs that don't actually involve getting very clean).  Zayn checks his watch and finds that it's almost lunchtime, so he decides to head downstairs and ask Louis if he wants to go eat something.

In his common room, Zayn finds that Perrie, Leigh-Anne, Jesy, and Jade have gotten there first, and they've wrapped Louis in a group hug so tightly that Zayn can only see the top of his friend's head. 

"He's an arse," comes Leigh's muffled voice.

"Grade-A knob," agrees Jade.

"Right, like, who does he think he is, strolling back in here and fucking everything up?" Jesy puts in.

"Alright, let's give 'im some air," Zayn hears Perrie say. "Although, you're all right, what a prick."

The group hug slowly disperses to reveal Louis, still sad-looking but with a soft smile playing at the edge of his mouth. "Doesn't matter, though," Louis says, "because he's the one going to the ball with Harry, and I'm the one who's got no one to go with."

Zayn wonders how much Louis has told the girls about what's been going on the past couple of days. Probably not everything, he reckons, if the girls are talking bad about Nick instead of Harry.

"You can commiserate with us, then," says Perrie. "No one's asked any of us."

Louis's mouth drops open. "No one's asked you four? I don't believe you."

"It's probably because you lot are always together," says Zayn.

"Oh, good afternoon to you too, Zayn," says Jade, glaring over at him. Louis gives him a small wave.

"No, I mean," Zayn hastily continues, not wanting to offend them, "like, if I wanted to ask you to go as my date and you were surrounded by your three other equally-intimidatingly-hot friends, I would be bloody  _terrified_  you'd reject me in front of them and then laugh about it later."

There's a pause. "That makes a lot of sense, actually," says Louis.

"Still doesn't matter, because everyone's already asked someone by this point," Perrie pouts.

"I haven't," Louis points out. "Perrie, d'you want to go to the Yule Ball with me?"

Perrie beams. "Of course!"

Zayn smiles into his hand. 

Jesy groans. "Now there's just three of us."

"Not after I let my friends know you three are available," says Zayn. He thinks of Danny, Ant, and Matt, who haven't asked anybody yet.

"I heard Andy Samuels hasn't asked anyone yet," Liam jokes. "You should go for it, Leigh."

"Piss off," Leigh-Anne snaps as the rest of them laugh. "I'm still mad at you for kicking 'im off the team  _two bloody days_  before the final match."

"My skull’s upset too, if that makes you feel any better," says Liam, rubbing at the back of his head, feeling for the swollen lump that Zayn knows is there. The rest of them laugh again, but Zayn frowns, wrapping his arms around Liam and holding him tightly. Watching Liam get hit like that had been  _terrifying_.

"Aww, look at Zayn," coos Jesy.

"S'not funny," Zayn grumbles.

Liam rubs at his shoulders soothingly. "Hey, I didn't think it was either."

Mollified, Zayn gives him a peck on the lips, causing a chorus of groans to arise from the other people in the common room. He rolls his eyes, breaking away from his boyfriend, and asks, "Anybody want to go to lunch? I'm starving."

"Yeah, sure, I skipped breakfast," says Jade. "Too early to get up for me."

The rest of the girls agree, but Louis looks hesitant. "I'm... I'm good here, actually, I think."

Zayn frowns. "You sure?"

Louis looks at the floor. "Yeah, sorry, I just don't really want to be around... other people right now."

 _Oh._  "Hey, Lou, want me to stay with you so we can plan our outfits for the ball?" asks Perrie kindly.

Louis looks grateful, a small smile gracing his lips, but he says, "You don't have to-"

"I  _want_  to, though," Perrie insists.

"I'll bring you both back something, if you want," Zayn offers. Perrie's being really great. "Anything specific?"

"Surprise me," says Perrie. Louis nods his head in agreement, looking over at Zayn with watery eyes.

Fuck. Zayn needs to fix this somehow, and  _fast._  He can't stand seeing Louis like this - Louis has always been the one that comforts others, the one Zayn goes to for advice and a good laugh, and seeing him this broken is something Zayn never wants to experience again.

xxx

At lunch, Zayn wraps up some sandwiches for Louis and Perrie at the Ravenclaw table; Jesy, Leigh, and Jade are sitting with him and Liam, and he's trying to figure out a way to communicate the girls' availability to his other friends without being too obvious. Finally, he decides to act like he's going to use the loo, so he gets up and excuses himself for just a minute, passing by Danny and leaning down to whisper, "No one's asked the girls to the ball yet."

Danny whips his head around. "You're shitting me," he whispers back.

Zayn shakes his head. "M’not," he replies. "Well, Lou just asked Perrie, but Jade, Leigh, and Jesy are still free agents.”

Danny's eyes widen and he immediately turns to his brother, frantically whispering.

Well, that's that, Zayn thinks.  He decides to keep up his bathroom charade by exiting the Great Hall for a few minutes and then returning to a happily paired-off group of friends.

He means to just leave and loiter in the lobby, but as he passes by the end of the Ravenclaw table he sees Harry sitting with Nick Grimshaw and his group of friends. Harry notices Zayn as well, reaching out an arm to halt his stride.

"Hey, Zayn," he says, looking slightly apprehensive. Zayn fights down the urge to slap him in the face, not wanting to make anything worse. Not to mention the fact that Nick and his friends have ceased all conversation and are now staring at them.

"Harry," says Zayn, trying to keep his tone neutral.

"D'you-" Harry lowers his voice. "D'you know where Lou is? Have you seen him at all?”

"Yes," Zayn says curtly. He looks pointedly at Nick and the rest of the group, who quickly turn back to themselves and try to pretend they aren't listening to the exchange.

"Is he - is he alright?" asks Harry. "He didn't, um, he come back to the dorm yesterday. I dunno where he was."

"He was on my couch," Zayn tells him. Inwardly, he rejoices, scoring a small victory with the information that Harry did indeed sleep by himself yesterday night. He hopes Harry and Nick haven't actually done anything yet.

Harry looks surprised and relieved at the fact that Louis was on Zayn's couch. Zayn still wants to slap him, but instead he asks him, "Can I talk to you for a minute? In private?"

Harry nods and gets up, and as the two of them walk out of the Great Hall together, Zayn can feel Nick's eyes on them.

Zayn leads Harry a short way down the corridor leading to the dungeons and then pulls him behind a suit of armor. "So, Harry, any particular _reason_  why Louis had to sleep on my couch last night?"

Harry gulps. "Um, did he tell you-"

"He told me everything," Zayn interrupts him, "but I want to hear it from you."

Harry looks at him sharply. "Um, well, Nick asked me to go to the ball with him two days ago. Like, after the Quidditch match. And then, I was gonna tell Lou, but I didn't get a chance to until the next morning when Nick wanted me to go shopping with him, and I didn't think it would be a big deal to him because - well, you were there at that party last week, you know that he doesn't, like, want me that way - but he got really upset and started screaming at me to get out, and I haven't seen him since."

Zayn studies Harry's face while he's talking; he seems pretty upset, but it's muted, masked by confusion. Harry also completely glosses over the part where he let Louis drop after domming him. It's - is it possible that he genuinely had no idea what he was doing?

"That's it?" asks Zayn. Harry looks even more confused and dejected. "That's all you want to tell me? That's all that matters?"

"Um," Harry says hesitantly, "I don't know if he'd want me to say anything about - um-"

"The fact that you dommed him for the first time  _ever_  and then fucked right off the next morning?" Zayn asks. It comes out more accusatory than he was intending, but, fuck it, he deserves to be angry.  _Louis_  deserves to be angry. And Zayn hasn’t exactly forgiven Louis for crushing Harry’s heart at that party last week, either – _Merlin,_ this is all such a mess. Zayn isn’t sure who to be more angry at, but right now he’s focusing on Harry.

Harry gasps. "Zayn - he told you?"

"No," Zayn says angrily, "he told Niall, who told me because  _he_  didn't know what to do."

 _"Niall?"_  asks Harry, incredulous. "Why would he tell  _Niall?"_

"Oh, I don't know, Harry, maybe because  _Niall_  found him yesterday in some random corridor curled up behind a suit of armor crying," Zayn tells him, "and he took him out for a drink and asked him what was wrong, and Louis told him everything because someone was finally taking care of him and it  _wasn't you."_

Harry's jaw drops. "He was crying?"

"He's been crying for a whole bloody day!" Zayn explodes. "Are you that fucking stupid, Harry? It was his first time subbing! Think about how you felt your first time - you can't just fucking leave someone like that."

"I didn't leave him!" Harry insists, looking upset. "I cuddled him after and everything."

"But you left the next day," Zayn presses, and, fuck, he didn't mean for this to turn into a Zayn-shouts-at-Harry fest, but he needs to make Harry understand, "and what do you think he thought then? That something about him wasn't good enough for you, so you fucking left!"

"Why would that matter to him, though? I didn't think he would care," says Harry wildly, almost  _pleadingly_ , like he's slowly figuring out how much he fucked up and is imploring Zayn to tell him that it's all going to be okay. Zayn – Zayn _wishes_ he was able to tell him that, but he _can’t_. "I didn't think it would matter to him-"

"For  _Merlin's_  sake, Harry, this isn't about him not wanting to date you," Zayn tells him, softening his voice just a little bit at how upset Harry looks, "and I know you're upset about that and - um - there are things Louis probably wanted to tell you, too, but - this isn't _about_ that, this is about him trusting you enough to let you dom him and you throwing it back in his face like you didn't even care."

Harry looks aghast. "Oh my god - I didn't-"

"Maybe you didn't, but you did."

Harry grips Zayn's arm before Zayn can treat those as his parting words and walk away. "Is he - can I see him? Is he still in your common room?"

Zayn considers this for a little bit. If there's still any chance they can fix this - "Yeah, he is. I dunno if he'll want to see you, but. C'mon."

They walk away from the dungeons and instead head in the direction of Zayn's common room. Zayn hopes that Liam remembers to bring the sandwiches that he'd set aside for Louis and Perrie. The first minute of their walk is completely silent, but then Harry speaks up again.

"I didn't - Zayn, I swear I didn't do it on purpose."

"I know you wouldn't, H. It’s not like I don’t know you’re the last person on this _planet_ who’d want to hurt him," Zayn tells him honestly, "but you've - you can't be stupid about that sort of thing, Harry, you can't afford to, because it's really dangerous, for, like, your relationship, and for Louis as a person."

Harry gulps. "I would've - I would've done whatever I was supposed to do, if I'd known."

"Well, think about what Louis usually does for you, and you probably should've done that."

"He doesn't usually really do anything?" Harry says hesitantly. "Like, I mean, he'll stay with me after 'til we fall asleep, but sometimes he does it the night before a Quidditch match so he's gone when I wake up, and, I mean - I guess I just didn't realize there was anything else you were supposed to do, because he never did."

Zayn frowns.

"N-not that I'm blaming him, or anything, I'm just saying."

"Maybe it wasn't bad for you because you knew he was going to come back eventually," Zayn reasons. He isn't sure, though, not even after all he's read in the Restricted Section. He’s completely out of his element. "But that's another talk for another time you should be having with him, not me, y’know?”

"I didn't realize there were all these rules you were supposed to follow," says Harry uncomfortably as they amble up to the portrait leading to Zayn's common room. "I don't think Lou did either. We just -  _did_  it, I mean, it's not like there's a bloody book anywhere we could have read."

Zayn refrains from telling Harry about the books in the Restricted Section, figuring he'll save it for later once Louis and Harry make up. "That's alright. You wait here. I'll go get him."

Harry nods, scrubbing a hand over his eyes as Zayn recites the password and steps quickly through the portrait hole. He finds Louis and Perrie on the couch, cuddled up and making the fire turn different colors with their wands.

"No, that would be a good one on both of us," says Perrie, indicating the now baby-blue fire.

"You think so?" Louis asks, waving his wand and making it turn a shade darker. "I think that one would look better with your hair."

"Not with your tan," Perrie insists. “How’d you get like that, anyway? It’s bloody winter.”

"Hey," says Zayn, making his presence known, "sorry to interrupt, but-"

"Did you bring us food?" Perrie asks excitedly, turning around.

"No, um, Liam's bringing it," says Zayn, really  _really_  hoping that Liam is, in fact, bringing the sandwiches. "I, uh, ran into Harry, Lou. He's outside, and he wants to talk."

Louis turns around then, too. "Um."

"You don't have to if you don't want to," Zayn tells him.

"I don't really want to," Louis says in a small voice. "At least not right now."

Zayn nods sadly and then turns to leave. It’s almost unbearable to watch his two best friends drive each other even further away.

"Zayn!"

Zayn turns back around to see Louis making his way over.

Louis gets up close and whispers in Zayn's ear, "I don't - I don't really know why, I just don't want him to - see  _me,_  if that makes sense? Like, the fact that he's seen me - like that, and-" he cuts off, taking a deep breath and trying to calm himself again. His tone is desperate, like he's trying really hard to articulate how vulnerable he's feeling. "Like, I wish I could take that memory away from him. He obviously doesn't want it, and I feel - even now, I feel like I have to, I don't know, cover myself up, and he isn't even in the room. Just the  _idea_  of talking to him-"

"Shh, it's okay," Zayn cuts him off, not wanting Louis to have to stammer through an explanation any more. "I understand, babe. You don't owe him an explanation."

"In case he asks," Louis says miserably, then goes to flop back onto the couch with Perrie, arms still wrapped around himself.

Zayn heads back outside to find Harry sitting against the stone wall adjacent to the portrait hole. Harry's head snaps up at Zayn's footfalls, and his eyebrows furrow when he realizes Louis isn't accompanying Zayn.

"He didn't want you to see him," Zayn says.

"Why?" Harry asks, looking even more miserable than before.

Zayn sits down next to him and puts an arm around Harry’s shoulders, because he can’t stand seeing Harry look like this any more than he can stand seeing Louis so broken. Of  _course_  Louis knew that Harry would ask. "He said... he said that he didn't like the fact that you saw him, like, when he was completely vulnerable, because you obviously didn't like it because you left, and now he can't stand even  _knowing_  that you saw him like that, much less actually being in your presence and remembering it."

Harry gapes at him.

"I told you it's really dangerous when you mess stuff like that up," says Zayn gently. "You left him when he was dropping, and now he feels abandoned and he thinks it's his fault."

 _"Shit,"_  Harry says into his hands.

"Harry-" Zayn starts.

"I just - I just wanted to go to the ball someone who wanted to g-go with me," says Harry, his hands still muffling his words. "I'm already regretting it so much, like–”

"How'd you know Louis didn't want to go with you?" Zayn asks him.

"He d-didn't ask."

"You didn't - did _you_ ask?"

There's silence from Harry. Then, "I thought - he  _knew_  that I wanted to go with him, like, fuck, he must've known, he has to know how I feel about him-"

"Well, if neither of you -  _Merlin,_  Harry, you two are hopeless.  You both kind of made the same mistake of not talking to each other about that kind of thing."

"Fuck," Harry says, wiping his eyes with his thumbs.

"Like, you just sprung that on him, that you were going with Nick," says Zayn, "and he told me before that he was just assuming you two were going together."

"Fuck," Harry says again. His shoulders start to shake, and Zayn grips him tighter. "Oh god, f-fuck, this is what I get for trying to make myself h-happy-"

"Harry, you and Lou could make each other happy, if you'd let each other," Zayn tells him, trying not to rub anything in but instead set something up for the future.

"I fucked it all up-" Harry starts to wail.

"Zayn?" comes a new voice.

Zayn turns to see Liam standing there with the wrapped parcel of sandwiches, along with Jesy, Jade, and Leigh-Anne.

"Hey, Li," Zayn says weakly. Harry is still shaking silently next to him.

"Harry, what are you-" Liam starts.

"I'm leaving," says Harry, his voice thick with tears, and he shrugs Zayn’s arm off and stands up, still covering his face. "D-don't worry, I'm leaving, I'm leaving."

He walk-runs away down the corridor, leaving the little group staring after him in shock.

xxx

The next day is the coldest day of winter thus far. It doesn't snow, but thick grey clouds cover the entire sky, and the sun never once peeks out from behind them.

Zayn wakes up around eleven and grabs his wrapped birthday gift for Louis from his desk and wanders downstairs to wake Louis up by jumping on top of him. Louis gives an "oof" of surprise and slowly wakes up, realizing that Zayn is on top of him and then starting to wrestle him happily.

Liam comes downstairs a couple of minutes later and joins them as they play-fight in front of the fireplace. "Happy birthday, Lou!"

"Thanks, Liam," says Louis, rolling out from underneath them and flopping onto his back.

"Happy eighteenth," says Zayn, grabbing Louis's gift from the couch and handing it to him.

"Oh, you didn't have to-"

"Shhh," Zayn shushes him.

Louis opens the package to reveal a six-pack of Quidditch-themed shot glasses. "Nice!" He exclaims happily, examining them.

"The Snitch one floats," Zayn tells him.

“These are awesome, Zee!”

"That way you can't get too drunk, y'know, you have to be at least a little sober to catch a floating shot glass," adds Liam.

"Fuck you, Payne, I'll get as drunk as I want," Louis jokes, catching him in a headlock.

The boys laugh and wrestle for a while longer, and then decide to head down to lunch. Or - Liam and Zayn decide to, that is.

"I'm not hungry," says Louis. "Perrie already gave me some chocolates from Honeyduke's for my birthday, I'll just eat those if I ever want something."

Zayn isn't sure whether to say it or not, but. "You're going to have to see him eventually, Lou. As in, tonight."

"Not yet, though," says Louis breezily, flopping back on the couch. "Have fun at lunch."

Zayn sighs but drops it, tugging Liam along out through the portrait hole. Outside, though, they almost step on a small parcel sitting in the hallway.

Zayn picks it up and reads the tag:  _Louis._

He sighs. "We should go back in and give this to him."

Liam and Zayn walk back into Zayn's common room.

"What's up?" asks Louis.

"This was outside. For you."

Zayn gives Louis the parcel. It's very light, wrapped in cloth. Louis unwraps it with only slightly shaking hands to reveal a note and some sort of necklace. Halfway through reading the note, Louis starts to tear up, and by the end, his shoulders are shaking with silent sobs as he picks up the necklace.

Louis shoves the note into Zayn's hand and looks at the piece of jewelry more closely. Zayn reads the note:

_Dear Louis,_

_I know you don't want to see me right now, or probably even hear from me, but I wanted to give you your birthday gift. I got it for you months ago and it wouldn't be right for anybody else to have it. I know you'd talked about getting your Patronus tattooed on you for a while, but I figured until you decide for sure you could have this necklace. I bewitched it so the stag dances when you hold it. I hope you like it._

There are a bunch of ink smudges at the bottom, and what looks like about five beginnings of the word "sorry" crossed out, including one that Zayn’s _pretty_ sure used to say “I’m sorry for everything.” Then, just:

_Happy birthday,_

_Harry_

Zayn looks back at Louis, who's holding the dancing stag necklace. It's about two inches tall, and it looks like it's made of white gold.

"It's so p-pretty," Louis sniffs as it prances around happily in his hand. It hardly takes anything to set him off crying these days. Zayn  _hates_  it.

When Louis puts the necklace on, his hands shake a bit, and the stag gives another leap and then settles against his chest.  It suits him well, but Zayn wishes it’d been given to him in better circumstances.

"You want us to go, love?" he asks.

Louis nods.

"Alright," says Zayn. "We'll bring you something back from lunch."

He and Liam leave without saying anything else, and once they're in the corridor, Liam takes Zayn's hand and squeezes tightly, not letting go even as they sit down in the Great Hall to eat.

xxx

That night, the same Great Hall in which the students had a simple lunch is splendidly decked out for the Yule Ball, draped in rich fabrics and tinsel and streamers, with a gigantic Christmas tree in the corner covered in snow placed under a Freezing Charm. The ceiling is enchanted to appear like it’s snowing indoors, and every so often wind “blows” the snow around, giving the appearance that they’re in a snowglobe.

There are dozens of small tables covered in purple and gold tablecloths, and Zayn and Liam, Perrie and Louis, Niall and Ellie, and Stan and Eleanor snag one near the refreshments table.

“Hagrid really outdid himself this year,” says Niall, gesturing to the tree.  There’s a basket of bread on the table, and he reaches for it immediately.

“Yeah, I know,” Stan agrees. “That’s got to be at least sixty feet tall.”

Stan and Eleanor are decked out in a purple color scheme, wearing dress robes and a dress (respectively) that Eleanor’s parents apparently bought for them in _Paris,_ of all places.  Her dress is strapless, with a structured bodice that makes her shoulders look lovely, and Stan’s waistcoat is made of the same expensive-looking material.

Perrie and Louis are matching too, but for them everything is in a baby-blue color that makes their skin and eyes pop.  They’d hastily bewitched their clothes yesterday, so while they look a bit less put together than Stan and Eleanor the overall effect is no less striking.

“Anyone want to get drinks?” Louis asks, eyeing the refreshments table.

“Yeah, definitely,” says Zayn, standing up. “What does everybody want?”

The other six place their orders with Zayn and Louis, who walk over to the punch table in companionable silence.

“We’re spiking our punch, right?” asks Louis with a smirk. He looks good, considering he’s spent the past several days crying his eyes out – he’s got some color in his face and he looks a little less tired than he has been.

Zayn snorts. “Course we are.” He pats the pocket of his dress robes, where the metallic _clang_ of a flask echoes. He filled it with vodka earlier.

Almost everyone at the table had wanted punch, so Zayn and Louis busy themselves ladling the fruity mixture into the silver goblets placed around the table. The bowl is huge, so big that four or five students can stand around it at a time, so Zayn isn’t surprised when another student sidles up to them and begins filling glasses with punch as well.

That is, until they speak up.

“Lovely night, innit?” asks Nick Grimshaw.

Zayn just barely refrains from gasping out loud at the sheer _nerve_ of this bloke. He glances quickly over at Louis, expecting a fight, but – but instead of looking at Nick with fire in his eyes like he normally does, Louis keeps his eyes down, continuing to ladle punch into the goblets.

“Uh, yeah,” Zayn says eventually, when it becomes clear that Louis isn’t going to respond. “Brilliant.”

“The tree’s even bigger than last time,” Nick continues.  He’s filled two goblets, and Zayn realizes with a sickening lurch that one of them is probably for Harry.

“Mhmm,” says Zayn politely.  Louis still hasn’t looked up.

“And you’re here with Liam, Zayn?” asks Nick.

“Uh – yeah, yeah.”

“And who’s _your_ date, Louis?”

Zayn almost knocks one of the goblets over in his haste to fill them up quickly and _get out of here._ Why is the ladle so _small,_ Merlin–

“Perrie,” says Louis quietly, still not meeting Nick’s eyes. “The, uh – she’s Head Girl, if you know her.”

“Ah, Perrie, yes!” Nick exclaims happily, snagging two cocktail napkins from the large pile. “Lovely girl. A couple of us got put in Charms class with the seventh-year Hufflepuffs, so I’ve gotten to know her quite well.”

Zayn keeps looking at Louis to see what he’s going to do – the Louis Zayn knows would’ve come up with at least ten scathing insults by now. Instead, Louis just finishes filling the last goblet and mumbles, “Yeah, she’s great.”

“I bet you two look lovely together,” says Nick loudly. “Now, don’t let me take up any more of your time, lads, I’ve got to get back to my date as well. Cheers!”

And with that, he walks away, leaving Zayn to gape after him in anger.  He expects Louis to look similarly outraged, but Louis just looks _defeated,_ his eyes sad and hollow like he’s accepted everything without bothering to put up a fight. Like Nick Grimshaw has _won._

 _“Wingardium Leviosa,”_ Louis intones, pointing his wand at the four goblets he’s filled. They rise into the air one by one, suspended in front of him, and as Louis turns to walk back to their table his lip only wobbles a little bit.

Zayn casts the same spell and then jogs to catch up with him. “Louis–”

“Don’t,” says Louis quietly. “Please don’t.”

They arrive back at the table silently, and the others seem to catch on to their somber mood. Liam looks at Zayn quizzically and Zayn just shakes his head.

“Let’s get some alcohol in these pronto,” he hears Jesy yell from another table, pulling out her own flask and pouring some into her drink.  “I didn’t come here to watch Helga Cornfoot try to dance _sober.”_

Zayn takes out his own flask and does the same, letting it get passed around the table to anyone who wants it. Louis adds a very large amount to his own drink, and Zayn makes a mental note to keep an eye on him.

After it gets started up, the conversation is pleasant for a while, especially when dinner is served and their table indulges in the House Elves' best cooking. The courses seem to be endless, and even Louis is back to smiling once they’ve had their fill of chocolate mousse for dessert.

Once the dessert plates have disappeared, Headmistress McGonagall casts _Sonorus_ and clears her throat.

“We will now have a special performance from our Hogwarts school choir, conducted by none other than our own Charms professor, Mr. Filius Flitwick.”

“Oh, shit,” Niall slurs, burping as he tries to stand up. “Forgot we were performing.”

So did Zayn. He looks to the front of the hall near the great tree, where Professor Flitwick is gathering the choir together.

“Good luck, love,” says Ellie, kissing Niall on the cheek.

“Thanks, doll,” Niall coos, finishing off his drink and smacking his lips.  “C’mon, Jadesy, let’s go,” he calls to the next table over, where Jade is struggling to get to her feet in heels because she’s similarly drunk. 

Zayn glances back to the tree as Niall and Jade toddle over and notices that a lot of the older choir members seem to be in a similar state.  Hey, the Yule Ball only comes once every three years, right?

Then Zayn sees Harry wandering up as well. He’s wearing traditional black and white dress robes, and he looks much more in control of his faculties than most of the people up there.  He also doesn’t look particularly happy – the half-smile on his face looks forced as all hell, and his movements are slow and less jubilant than the students around him.

“Aw, look at Leigh’s dress,” Perrie whispers to Eleanor excitedly.

Zayn turns to look at Louis and gauge his reaction, but Louis seems to suddenly be very interested in the tablecloth.  His still-sad eyes are flicking up occasionally, though, like he’s trying not to sneak glances at Harry but can’t help himself.

Professor Flitwick clears his throat and Zayn turns back around, watching as the student choir assembles themselves.

They begin with a rendition of “Good King Wenceslas,” which is always a wizarding favorite. Muggles sing it, too, but what they don’t know is that King Wenceslas was actually a wizard and only managed to bear his cold, snowy journey with the assistance of a strong Warming Charm.  Even though a lot of the students are tipsy at best, it’s still very good, and the way their voices echo around the cavernous hall sends gooseflesh up and down Zayn’s arms.  Flitwick’s short little arms are waving furiously as he conducts, and for a moment Zayn forgets all of the drama happening to his friends and lets himself relax into the jubilant Christmas carol.

Two songs later, Zayn begins to notice that Harry’s sneaking glances over at Louis as well. Louis doesn’t notice, obviously, because most of the time he’s looking down at the table and trying to twist his face into a mildly pleasant and disinterested expression, but Harry’s definitely craning his neck to look over while he sings. Harry frowns when Louis doesn’t look up, but eventually he looks straight ahead again and focuses back on Professor Flitwick.

Zayn rolls his eyes and lays his head on Liam’s shoulder, trying to tune everything out and just listen to the choir.

Once they finish up their rendition of “O Christmas Tree,” though, the choir is apparently finished, and the students walk back to their seats amid thunderous applause. 

“That was brilliant, mate!” Stan tells Niall as he sits back down.

“Thanks,” says Niall, pink-cheeked and grinning. “Always forget how much fun it is to perform until I’m doing it, y’know?”

A few minutes later, orchestra music fills the hall and McGonagall invites couples to start making their way onto the dance floor.

“I hate dancing,” grumbles Stan, watching as Danny and Jesy become one of the first couples out there, slow-dancing to the music.

“Yeah, but how many times do you get to dance to a live orchestra?” asks Eleanor loudly, taking a swig directly from her own flask. “C’mon.”

She drags Stan on to the dance floor a moment later despite his loud protests, making Louis and Zayn laugh.

“We should dance too, at some point,” Liam tells Zayn.

“In a bit,” says Zayn. “I’m terrible at dancing, though, so I need to be drunker first.”

He gets up to refill his punch glass, then returns to the table and adds what’s left in the flask, which comes out to a shot or so of vodka. After drinking about half of it, Zayn looks back out to the dance floor just in time to see Nick leading Harry out to dance as well.

Oh, shit.

Zayn hopes that Louis hasn’t noticed yet, but of course Louis notices right away, and his only response is to make a sad little sound and bury his head in Perrie’s shoulder.

“Shhh,” Perrie soothes him, wrapping an arm around him.

Louis keeps his eyes closed, and Zayn tries to remember how much Louis has had to drink – how much _all_ of them have had to drink.  

A few songs later, Niall’s apparently had enough alcohol that he feels comfortable enough to dance, because the next second he and Ellie stand up and walk out onto the floor together, wrapping their arms around each other and kissing sweetly as they sway back and forth. 

That looks kind of nice, actually, like something Zayn might want to do with Liam. 

Like he’s read Zayn’s mind, Liam asks, “D’you want to go dance now?”

Zayn thinks about saying no, about not rubbing it Louis's face or something, but then he thinks that one dance maybe won't hurt him.

He and Liam find a spot near the edge of the floor where the crowd is thinnest, and Liam wraps both of his arms around Zayn’s neck, leaving Zayn to place his hands on Liam’s waist.  Liam’s dress robes are pressed and starched and smell a bit like Madam Malkin’s shop still, because he’s grown so much since the last Yule Ball that he’d had to buy new ones.  Zayn, on the other hand, is wearing a dark red embellished sherwani over a pair of black trousers, and both of them smell like home because he’d gotten them by owl from his mum only a few days prior.

He and Liam dance slowly, and Zayn rests his head on Liam's shoulder and closes his eyes for a little bit, trying to forget about everything for just one song. Liam’s warm thumb strokes over his shoulder and Zayn sighs happily, thinking not for the first time that night that Liam is his rock.

Halfway through the song, Liam catches his lips in a kiss, and their lips slide together sweetly as Liam's hands play with the short hairs at the nape of his neck. Zayn is so blissfully happy whenever he's with Liam, and they've only been dating for a few months but Liam makes him feel like everything is going to be ok, like whatever's gone wrong for Zayn that week is going to get better, and - it always does, is the strange thing, Liam's presence makes him feel grounded and strong and powerful. Liam - Zayn loves Liam.

_Zayn loves Liam._

Zayn gasps and draws back from Liam, looking into his warm brown eyes and suddenly acquiring a name for the emotion he's been feeling for the past few weeks. He's never - he's never felt it before, not really, not _love_ for someone else who's not related to him.

"What's wrong?" Liam asks.

"I love you," Zayn blurts, then takes his hand off of Liam's shoulder so he can clap it over his mouth in shock.

Liam's answering smile lights up his entire face. "Hopefully that isn't something that's, like, wrong with you."

"Shut up," Zayn breathes, still surprised at himself.

"I love you too," Liam whispers, and Zayn lunges forward happily and joins their lips together again, pouring all of his newfound love into their kiss.

When the song ends, they break apart reluctantly and head back to their mostly-empty table, only to find that Louis is openly sobbing into Perrie's shoulder now.

"Merlin, what happened?" asks Zayn, still holding Liam's hand.

"Nick and Harry went into the courtyard," Perrie says softly, stroking Louis's hair back from his forehead.

_Oh._

Everybody knows what Hogwarts’ biggest courtyard, straight off of the main lobby and next to the Great Hall, is used for at night – and it certainly isn't Quidditch. It has plenty of nooks and bushes that couples like to use for snogging or, in some cases, something more.

"He's gone," Louis is wailing over and over again.

"How much has he had to drink?" Zayn asks, coming over and putting a hand on Louis's back.

"I’m not sure,” says Perrie worriedly. “You saw how much he put into his drinks at dinner.”

"Let's get him back to the couch," says Zayn, kissing Liam on the cheek and then helping Louis get up from the table.  “He doesn’t need to be here right now.”

"Good idea," says Perrie. "C'mon, love, it's time for bed."

"Don't want to," Louis sniffs, "I just want Harry, I want to fall asleep with Harry,  _please-"_

"Shhh," Zayn shushes him, hardly able to stand hearing what's coming out of Louis's mouth. It's utterly heartbreaking.

It takes a little while, but he and Perrie manage to wrestle Louis up the stairs to get to their common room and then tuck him into the couch, drawing the blankets up over him while he's still sobbing.

Zayn starts to draw away when Louis has quieted a bit, only to have Louis sob, "No, no, Zayn,  _please,_  don't leave me, no-"

"Hey, hey, love," says Perrie, "I'll stay with you, ok?"

"Okay," Louis mumbles, nuzzling into her touch like a child and continuing to hiccup.

"You go on back with Liam, Zayn," says Perrie. "I'll stay with my date."

She and Louis both giggle at that, until Louis seems to remember why he was crying and starts to do so once again.

Zayn shuts the portrait hole to the sound of Louis wailing, "Pez, how c-could I let this happen-"

Zayn resolves to get Perrie something very nice as a belated Christmas present. He wants to be there for his friend, too, but he also wants to be a little bit selfish and have some semblance of a nice night with his boyfriend.

He hopes to return to the Yule Ball and have time for a couple of nice dances with Liam, but as he arrives back in the Great Hall, what Zayn gets instead is a flustered Harry pushed up against the huge entrance doors by an extremely angry Stan as the rest of their little group looks on.

"I've known him over six years, and  _never_  in my life have I  _ever_  seen him this upset," Stan is spitting at him, pushing him in the chest.

"Please-" Harry tries to get in.

"I don't know why you had to go and fuck it all up, but I  _don't_  want you seeing him right now, he doesn't need that," Stan tells him. "So why don't you fuck off back to wherever you were and stop upsetting him, yeah? Sounds like a plan to me."

"Please, I need to talk to him-"

"And what? Tell 'im you're sorry? That it  _wasn't what it looks like?_  S'too late for that, Harry, we all saw."

Harry finally looks past Stan and sees Zayn. "Zayn, Zayn, please, you have to help me-"

"Hey, lads, break it up," says Zayn, stepping up and getting right in between them.

"You saw where he went," Stan says to Zayn, pointing at Harry accusingly. "And now he wants to go  _explain himself_ , fuck's sake."

"Zayn, please, can I talk to you for a second?" Harry pleads.

"Fine," says Zayn, really not enjoying the way his night is continuing to be ruined by his friends' stupidity.

Once Harry gets Zayn around a corner, it all spills out.

"Okay, so, like, I know Nick wanted to hook up with me tonight, and I let him take me into the courtyard, but, like, I knew I didn't want to do anything, so once he started trying to I told him I couldn't, and - I tried to let him, Zayn, I really did, because I just wanted to be happy and be with someone who wants me, but - I'm  _not_ , with him, I'm not happy the way I am with Lou, and I came back in finally and he was gone, and so were you, and Stan saw me and got all pissed off, which - I guess it looked bad, didn't it-"

"Woah, woah, slow down," says Zayn. "You're telling me you and Nick didn't do anything?"

"Nothing," Harry says. Zayn looks into his eyes and sees nothing but honesty there. "We didn't do anything, Zayn, you  _have_  to believe me, please, I need to go talk to him while he's still awake, I can  _fix_  this, Zayn, I promise-"

"Fine," Zayn says again, cautiously this time. He's worried for Louis, but - "One chance, Harry, one more chance is all you get. Don't fuck this up. You can't, like, you literally can't afford to fuck this up."

"Thank you," Harry gasps, taking Zayn's hands with his. "I won't, you know I won't, I've been in love with him ever since I first saw him-"

"I know," says Zayn, feeling himself almost tear up at how earnest Harry's being and how important this entire fucking situation is. He feels like he should be getting paid for how good of a friend he's been, fuck, but at the same time all he wants is to see his two best friends happy. "The password's 'Cleansweep.' Changed it this morning."

"Thank you so much," Harry says again, and then he dashes off, shouting 'thank you's over his shoulder until he's out of sight.

Zayn stares after Harry until his footsteps stop echoing, then turns around to go back into the Great Hall, fully intending on downing the rest of whatever's left in Jesy's flask and then snogging Liam until both their lips fall off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Louis finally talk, Christmas and New Year's celebrations abound, and Care of Magical Creatures yields an interesting discovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is definitely my favorite chapter I've ever written for this; it's the first one I'm completely satisfied with since Chapter 4 or 5, I think. I hope you love it as much as I do.

Louis doesn’t think he’s ever felt so cold, even though he’s wearing a full set of dress robes and tucked under several blankets  _and,_ on top of that, sweating.  Perrie’s been running a hand through his hair for what feels like the past two hours but what could also very well be only five minutes.  He has no concept of time anymore, no concept of anything; any buzz he’d had from the alcohol has worn off by now and left him feeling miserable and low.

He stopped crying about a minute ago, but he knows that one stray thought in the wrong direction could set him off, so he’s pointedly trying to focus very hard on the warm hand that’s carding through his sweaty fringe.  Louis knows that Perrie is waiting for him to fall asleep, and, fuck, there’s nothing he wants more, but he almost feels  _too sad_ to fall asleep, which he didn’t even know was fucking possible. 

Louis concentrates as hard as he can on breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, trying to relax himself enough to get to sleep, because sleep is all he wants right now – he just wants to escape from the hell that’s become his reality, quite possibly sleep for the rest of his life.  Perrie’s humming some wordless tune now, and it’s so pretty that it almost sets Louis off crying again, but he soldiers through it, his bottom lip trembling wildly as he fights to stay calm.

“Shh,” Perrie hums, perhaps noticing how he’s scrunching up his face again in an effort not to cry.  “You were doing so well, hon.  D’you – d’you want to hear a joke?”

Louis feels like a small child, and he  _would_  resent Perrie for this but he’d rather be coddled and given attention than left alone.  He misses his mum.  “Sure.”

“Okay,” says Perrie, thinking a little.  Then, she says, “So a werewolf walks into a bar–”

Suddenly, she stops talking, craning her head as if she’s listening for something.  Then, after a second, she shakes her head and says, “Sorry, just thought I heard someone outside say the password.  Anyway, so the bartender says–”

“Louis!”

 _That’s not a very funny joke,_ Louis thinks, before he realizes that it wasn’t Perrie that said his name.  It was –

“Harry?” Perrie says sharply.  “What are you doing here? How did you get the password?”

“Zayn gave it to me,” comes Harry’s voice.  The back of the couch is preventing Louis from seeing the rest of the common room and, by extension, Harry.

 _“Zayn_ gave you the password?” asks Perrie incredulously.

“Yeah, I, um – I explained everything to him, and he gave me the password so I could come and talk to Lou,” Louis hears Harry say.  “Is he here?”

Perrie doesn’t say anything, just glares back at him, but Louis can’t stand what might happen next, wouldn’t be able to stand Harry walking away, walking back out and walking out of Louis’s life, so he croaks out, “M’here.”

“Louis,” Perrie says, quietly.

“It’s okay, Pez,” says Louis, sitting up a little bit.  He still can’t see Harry.  “I – we should talk.”

“Is it the best time, though?” asks Perrie.  “You’re so tired, and you’re still a bit drunk–”

Louis shakes his head firmly.  “M’not drunk, just sad.”

Perrie looks at him with pity, which is something Louis absolutely can’t stand.  He  _needs_  to talk to Harry so his life stops being so fucking  _pathetic_ and so all of his friends stop walking on eggshells around him and trying to smother their own happiness so he doesn’t get jealous.  Louis is fucking  _done_  with all of that.

“Please,” Louis pleads quietly with Perrie. “We need to fix this.”

Perrie looks at him for another moment while Harry stays silent.  Finally, she says, “Alright, Lou.  But I’ll be – I’ll be up in my room, okay, so if you need me, just call for me.”

Louis nods and smiles at her, squeezing her hand, and then Perrie gets up, her soft blue gown swishing out behind her as she walks over to the staircase leading to her bedroom.  Right before she disappears up the stairs, she turns around and says, “Don’t fuck this up, Harry.  Either of you, actually.”

Louis sits up so that he can finally see Harry, and Harry looks at the ground and says, “Zayn already told me.  Got it covered.”

As Perrie finally retreats to her room, Louis wonders what else Zayn has told Harry.  How much Harry knows.

Before Louis can think too much on this, Harry starts toward him, and, suddenly, all Louis can think about is  _gonna feel so good such a slut for it take it so well fuck you’re tight_ and Harry’s hands on his skin, Harry all over him, and he feels a flash of arousal but also a very strong burst of embarrassment at how he acted the last time he was alone with Harry.  Before Louis can think about what he’s doing, he sits up a little bit more, squishing himself into as small a ball as possible and drawing the blankets even tighter around himself.

Harry stops short, clearly noticing that he’s making Louis fold in on himself, and Louis wants to say  _it’s okay,_ but he’s being assaulted by memories of pleading and begging to come, crying, collapsing like a ragdoll, thrashing around and pushing back on Harry, having to be tied up because he couldn’t stay still –

“Lou?” Harry says softly. 

Louis snaps out of his memories.  Harry is standing still now, looking at him cautiously, and Louis realizes that he’s now broken into a sweat again.  He wants to push the quilts off, but he also doesn’t want to move out from under the shapeless pile of blankets and robes that’s currently protecting him. 

“Hi,” he says softly, peering up at Harry and then quickly looking away when they make eye contact.  After a second, he asks, “Where’s Nick?”

“Dunno,” says Harry.  Louis thinks of the way Nick had led Harry out of the Great Hall – not through the main door, but through the door that leads to the snow-covered courtyard in the center of the school.  He thinks of the way Nick had an arm possessively slung over Harry’s shoulders, and he can’t help the way his lower lip trembles, can’t help the single tear that spills down his cheek. 

“You should – um, p-probably get back to him.  He must be wondering where you are,” Louis says shakily, intently studying the individual blue and grey threads on the Ravenclaw blanket draped over his knees.

“No, he’s – I told him I had to go see you.  Told him I couldn’t… see him anymore.”

Louis frowns, looking at the arm of the couch. “What, you interrupted your snogging session for me?  Odd.”

“No, Lou, we – nothing happened.  We didn’t do anything.  We’ve  _never_  done anything, actually,” says Harry. 

“Not for lack of him trying,” says Louis.  He still doesn’t want to look at Harry, because he’s terrified that once he does he’ll just ache all over again for Harry’s arms around him.

Harry sighs.  “He was, like, leaning in, right, to kiss me–”

Louis’s mind pictures that and he feels cold all over again.

“-and I just couldn’t – like I couldn’t do it, Lou, I literally just pushed him away–”

That mental picture is slightly more pleasing.

“-because I don’t want him that way, and I never have – I  _tried_  to, Merlin, I tried–”

“What?  Why did you try?” asks Louis, finally looking up at Harry. 

“Well–” Harry pauses, clearly thinking very much over what he’s about to say.  “I think – I think I’m sort of at the point in my life where I’m looking for something, um – long-term, now, and I, um, I didn’t think you were, but Nick seemed to be, so I figured I would give it a shot.”

Louis stares at a spot on the far wall behind Harry’s head and remembers how he’d drunkenly informed everybody at that party that he’d fucked Greg James in a club’s loo.  “Hey, I’m – I’m really, _really_ sorry about Greg, there hasn’t been anybody else–”

Harry shakes his head.  “I didn’t – I mean, thanks for saying that, but that’s not what I came here to talk about.  Can I – do you mind if I sit down?”

Louis thinks about this for a bit.  He supposes it wouldn’t be too weird if Harry sat on the other end of the couch.  “Sure,” he says, scooting even closer to his own end of the sofa.

Harry comes over and sits down, and the space between them is simultaneously reassuring to Louis and makes him ache all over with the memory of  _why_  this space is necessary, how Louis embarrassed himself completely the last time they were alone –

“Harry,” Louis says, before the other boy can say anything, “you didn’t – tell anyone about last weekend, did you?”

He pictures Harry laughing with Nick about the way Louis almost completely lost control of his body when Harry was working him over, and – Louis knows in his heart Harry would never do that, but he can’t stop  _thinking_  about it, and it’s making him shiver violently.

“No!” Harry says quickly.  “No, Merlin, no.  But Zayn told me you, um, told Niall.”

“Sorry,” says Louis quietly.  “I – I felt like I was going mad, though, I had to tell someone–”

“No, it’s fine,” says Harry.  “I’m the one who should be apologizing, Lou, fuck, I’m  _so_ sorry I left you like that–”

“I mean, you had robes to buy,” Louis says, more than a little bitterly.

“No, I – I shouldn’t have left you at all, it was your first time, and I didn’t even ask you how you were.  I was being an idiot.”

Louis’s urge to crawl over and snuggle into Harry’s arms is getting stronger by the second.  Now that his aversion to Harry’s presence has significantly decreased, maybe simply due to forced proximity, he’s feeling all of the mental walls he’d spent days building start to crumble.

“Zayn told me that there are, like, rules you should pay attention to when you’re domming someone,” Harry continues. 

“Like besides a safeword?” asks Louis. Gemma had told Harry about it after Harry had let slip that he and Louis were into that sort of thing.  Louis had thought that was the only big precaution, which is why they’ve always had one that Harry (or, recently, Louis) could use.

“Yeah, like, more mental rules, I think – whoever’s domming is s’posed to, like, stay with you for a while after, make sure you know you did well, and just – generally make sure you don’t feel abandoned,” says Harry.  “I – didn’t, I _didn’t,_ Lou, and I’m so _so_ sorry, I just – didn’t know what I was doing, but the last thing I  _ever_  wanted to do was hurt you.  That’s something I promised myself a long time ago I would never ever do, but – shit, I fucked up, Louis, I hurt you so much, y-you won’t even  _look_  at me now, and it’s all my f-fault.”

Louis can hear the quiver in Harry’s voice, knows his eyes must be filling with tears, but he knows that if he looks at Harry he’s going to start losing it, too. He has to get out what he’s been wanting to say for a while. “No, Haz, it’s my fault.  I pushed you away before all of this even happened.”

“I don’t – Louis, we could be  _so_ good together,” Harry says, almost pleadingly, his voice thick, “and I’ve spent the past, like, three _years_ wishing you would see that, b-but you don’t want me, and now I’ve fucked it up so much that I d-don’t think you even want anything to d-do with me anymore.”

Louis can feel his own lower lip trembling.  “I don’t know  _why_  you still want me after seeing me like that, Harry–”

“What?” asks Harry.  “You’re – are you joking?”

“I was a mess,” says Louis miserably.  “Jesus, I was disgusting–”

“No, what are you – don’t say that,” Harry says.  “Lou, oh my god, you were, like – that was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen.  You were  _gorgeous._ I could’ve, like, written poems about you.”

Louis feels himself flush with pleasure and then with anger.  “Well – Harry, why didn’t you  _tell_  me?  I fucking cried myself to sleep the next day thinking it was all just a big disappointment to you!”

Well.  He didn’t mean to tell Harry that he’d cried, but.  It all seems to be coming out, tonight, in bits and pieces.  Fuck it.

“That’s where I screwed up, because I didn’t think you  _wanted_  me to tell you, because I didn’t think you wanted us to be, like – emotionally involved, or whatever.  I was thinking about that time in sixth year when I called you beautiful during sex and you didn’t let me talk during it for, like, a _month_ after.”

Louis remembers that, remembers panicking and then repressing the memory, afraid of what it might do to their friendship. 

Before he can respond, though, Harry continues, “N-not that that’s your fault, I’m just – that’s what I was thinking when I didn’t say anything–”

“It’s kind of my fault,” Louis interrupts him, his voice a little more confident now that Harry has informed him that he was “gorgeous.”  “I’ve been spending years telling you I didn’t want a relationship with you, which includes like, all the emotional stuff that comes with it, I guess.”

Harry doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, so Louis chances a glance up from the blanket and over at Harry.  Harry’s staring at the mantle over the fireplace, the orange flames from the fire dancing in a single tear track streaked down his cheek.  It’s the first time Louis has really  _looked_  at him properly since Saturday, and Harry looks beautiful and lost, leagues away from the cheeky, confident boy Louis had first met. 

The four-day stretch of no interaction between them leading up to the Yule Ball is the longest they’ve gone without talking during the school year since their third year when Harry had kissed Louis on the cheek and Louis had admonished him on the spot, telling him that boys weren’t supposed to do that together.  Harry had gotten so upset that the two of them hadn’t talked for a whole week, not until Louis had crawled miserably into Harry’s bed (after making sure everyone else was asleep) and had informed him that he didn’t particularly  _care_  if boys weren’t supposed to kiss each other, because he didn’t want to kiss anyone else.

They’d been joined at the hip ever since, especially since their friendship turned properly sexual during fifth year, and Louis knows for a fact that there isn’t a soul on earth that knows him better than Harry knows him.  He’s – Harry’s his  _best friend,_ and Louis must’ve been completely mental for the last few years not to realize that he wants to see Harry every day for the rest of his  _life,_ and – unless both of them never marry and are perfectly content spending the rest of their days single – that spending time with Harry every day for the rest of his life involves being  _together_ with him.

Somehow, Louis had thought that being in a relationship with Harry would drastically change the dynamics of the way they interacted, but now, as he looks over at his best friend staring into the crackling fire, Louis realizes that Harry’s been more than his “best friend” for  _years_ now. Louis had been scared of putting himself out there like that, of making himself vulnerable to Harry’s rejection, when _really_ all that would change, should he and Harry decide to be in a relationship, would be the label.  And – Harry must’ve known this, must’ve thought about this all the time while Louis had his head up his arse, metaphorically speaking, and only _now_ is Louis beginning to understand how  _hurt_  Harry must have been over the past few years to hear Louis say over and over that they could never be together.

Louis focuses back on Harry, notices that a few new tear tracks have joined the original one on his face, sees him biting his lip to keep it from trembling.

“I mean–” Harry starts eventually, then pauses to collect himself again.  “That part might be true, but, like, that’s n-no excuse for not telling you how amazing you are, Lou, okay, you’re like – I care about you so much,  _so much,_ and I – I j-just want you to know that, okay?  Whenever it happens, I d-don’t want you to go into your first relationship thinking t-that you’re anything less than p-perfect–”

Harry cuts off, putting his head in his hands and drawing in a great, gasping breath, exhaling on a pained sob.  Eventually, he continues into his hands, “I don’t want m-me hurting you and being stupid to end up making you think that you don’t d-deserve someone who treats you right. You deserve so much.”

Louis literally can’t imagine ever being with anybody else, can’t imagine his first or second or last or  _only_  relationship ever being with anybody but Harry.  He tries to imagine going out to dinner and laughing with a faceless stranger, but the blank visage he’s trying very hard to picture always ends up ultimately turning into Harry’s happy, smiling face.

“Harry,” Louis says slowly, feeling his heartbeat start to quicken, “what if – what if I told you that I wanted all the, um, the emotional stuff?”

Harry finally looks over at him, and when their eyes meet Louis can see hurt and confusion flash in them before Harry finally seems to understand.  “I, um, you don’t – with _me?”_

Louis could almost laugh at how ineloquent they’re being, except for the fact that this is the most they’ve talked about this, about  _them,_ in the entire course of them being friends, and neither of them knows what the hell they’re doing.

“Yeah, Hazza, I’m – I’m  _so_ sorry it took me this long to realize it, and I know I’ve been a complete knob in the meantime, but – I don’t think I’ll ever want to be with anyone but you,” Louis says in one breath, trying to get all the words out before he chickens out again.   _Fuck._

He waits, his head pounding and his heart racing, as Harry stares at him.  Louis hopes so  _hard_  that this works out, because he feels like either he and Harry emerge from this moment stronger than ever, or they’ll never be able to recover from this –

“Lou,” Harry says eventually, looking at him with wide, wet eyes, “I’ll – fuck, I’ll work every fucking day to make this up to you, Lou, like – you deserve to be happy  _always_ , and I know it’s probably selfish but I wanna be that person.  I want to be the one who makes you happy.  Do you – do you think we can try?  Being together? If you don’t think–”

“No,” says Louis at once, “no, I want to now, okay, I just – you have to give me a little bit of time to get, like, adjusted to things, but – Harry, I–” he swallows heavily, willing himself not to cry – “I don’t want a time after we graduate where I don’t see you, or do anything with you–”

Harry sniffs.  “Lou, don’t – please don’t be joking, love, because I want, like,  _everything_  with you.”

Louis’s heart flutters.  “I’m not, Haz, I wouldn’t.  I can’t – I can’t lie to myself for another second.”

He really can’t.

Louis looks at Harry, realizes how different he looks from how they first met, more like a man than a boy, now, sad and confused and in way over his head.  Louis imagines that he himself must look the same way.

“Lou, would you – would you be okay if I hugged you?” Harry asks tentatively, his voice thick.  “Please tell me I can hug you–”

“Yeah,” says Louis quickly, starting to become more comfortable with himself around Harry now that he knows that they were both just being really,  _really_  stupid.  “Yeah, god, yes.”

Louis drags his tired, aching body across the couch, leaving his pile of blanket armor behind, and folds himself into Harry’s lap, waves of seizing, electric relief spreading out from every place his body makes contact with Harry’s.

“Oh god,” Harry says quietly, and it’s the first time in several years Louis has heard Harry utter the phrase outside of the bedroom.  He sounds so relieved, the desperate little crack in his voice mimicking the way Louis is feeling. 

Louis is so tired, so emotionally laid bare, that he can’t help the way he snuggles as closely as he can to Harry, nor the way that he starts to cry confused, relieved tears. Harry starts to cry, too, this time for real, as he gathers Louis in and buries his nose in Louis’s hair.

“Lou, Lou, Lou,” Harry gets out as Louis holds on to him tighter, “Lou, I’m s-so so sorry, love–”

“M’more sorry,” Louis hiccups, trying to squeeze Harry hard enough that he’ll stop shaking, “m’so sorry, Jesus, I don’t know h-how you don’t h-hate me.”

They’ve both hurt each other pretty badly, but Louis knows that both of them did it while they were still dancing around each other and trying to come to terms with their feelings.  And he knows that, with Harry, it’s always going to be alright. That they have the ability to hurt each other because they know each other so well, but they also have the ability to put each other back together. Louis hope that never has to happen again.

 “Could never,” Harry says firmly, starting to rub little circles on Louis’s back.  It feels really, really excellent.  “Could never hate you, Lou.”

“We’re kind of s-stupid,” says Louis.  “Both of us.”

Harry gives a watery laugh in agreement.   _Stupid for each other,_ Louis thinks.

“Okay, so–” Harry starts.  “No other people?”

“No one else,” agrees Louis. 

“And, um, can we go on, like, real dates?”

Louis smiles.  “Definitely.  The sappiest ones imaginable.”

Harry spreads out a big, comfortable palm across Louis’s back, making Louis sigh happily.

“Harry,” Louis starts after a small silence, not wanting to really bring this up right now but feeling like it’s important to establish, “I – um – I might not want to, um, jump back into things, though.  Like, sexually.  Just so you know. I still feel a bit weird.”

He feels Harry nod against him.  “That makes sense.  I’m so – Merlin, I’m so sorry, Lou, I’m never going to stop telling you how beautiful you are from now on.  You’ll have to put a Silencing Charm on me to shut me up, I swear.”

Louis laughs happily.

“But, yeah, we can take this at whatever pace you want,” Harry continues.  “We have all the time in the world now, love.”

“Fuck, I missed you,” Louis says into Harry’s chest.  He did, though – he missed their easy familiarity, the way their bodies seem to fit together like puzzle pieces, and Harry’s reassuring presence next to him at night.

“Missed you too,” Harry says back, holding him so close it feels like Harry’s trying to shove Louis inside his chest and keep him there.  Louis doesn’t think he’d mind, honestly.

Now that Louis isn’t tense anymore, now that he’s relaxed into Harry’s embrace and let warm happiness wash over him in soothing waves, he discovers that he’s actually spectacularly tired.  It probably has something to do with the fact that he hasn’t gotten decent sleep since last Saturday, however comfortable Zayn’s couch may have been.

“M’tired,” he mumbles eventually, feeling his eyelids droop.

“Me too,” says Harry.  “Y’wanna go to bed?  Or – you can sleep here, too, but if you want I can head back–”

“No,” Louis says immediately, “wanna sleep next to you.”

Harry makes a pleased little noise in his throat.  “We should head back to the dungeons, then. I’m starting to nod off.”

Louis grumbles as Harry starts to make like he’s going to get up, but then the thought of sleeping in their – Harry’s – no, _their_  bed is just too appealing to resist, so he slowly gets off of Harry’s lap and helps pull the other boy up from where he’s sunk into the couch.

As they exit Zayn and Perrie’s common room through the portrait hole together, Louis reaches for Harry’s hand and takes it in his, and he swears that he can feel Harry smiling through where their hands are linked together.

When they’re halfway down to the Slytherin common room, Harry abruptly stops walking.  “Shit, we need to let Zayn know where we’ve gone, else he might think I, like, kidnapped you or something.”

Louis snorts.  “You’re so melodramatic, Hazza.”

“Here, let me just–” Harry wrestles his wand out from within the folds of his dress robes and says,  _“Expecto Patronum!”_

A pretty silver doe bursts from the tip of his wand, trotting about for a bit before shyly turning to the pair of them.

“Um, hey, Zayn, it’s Harry,” says Harry slowly, and Louis wonders if the doe actually rolls her eyes at Harry’s fumbling little introduction or if he’s just imagining things, “so, Lou and I worked things out, like, really well, and we’ve gone back to the Slytherin dorms together.  Hope you don’t hate me.  We should eat dinner together tomorrow or something.  Bye!”

“For god’s sake, Harry, it’s not an answering machine!” Louis says fondly as Harry sends the silver doe off in the direction of the Head common room.

“I’m always bad at sending short messages,” says Harry.  “Anyway, that’ll be waiting for Zayn when he gets back.”

“She’ll probably interrupt him and Liam snogging,” says Louis, taking Harry’s hand again as they continue on to their dorm.

Harry cackles and Louis joins him, too, thinking about the silver doe silently bumbling up to the pair of boys and stammering “Um, hey, Zayn, it’s Harry” in Harry’s awkward tone right in Zayn’s ear and scaring him out of his wits.

Eventually, they make it back to their common room and ascend the short staircase up to their dorm.  Louis is pleased to find that none of their other roommates have made it back yet, which will probably put off some awkward explanations (especially to Stan), at least until tomorrow.  The Yule Ball must still be going strong, then.

Harry starts stripping off his clothes like he always does before bed.  He’s already down to just his trousers, his chest bare, when he stops and says, “Oh, shit do you – you don’t mind, do you?”

“No, s’fine,” Louis says sleepily, taking his own dress robes off.  He keeps his undershirt on, and his pants, too, but he feels comfortable enough to crawl into bed with a mostly-naked Harry. 

They fall asleep wrapped around each other, Harry using Louis’s sternum as a pillow and both of them tangling their legs together, and even though Harry’s head is a dead weight on his chest and it’s making it a little bit difficult for his lungs to expand, Louis feels like he can finally _breathe_  again for perhaps the first time in the entire month of December.

xxx

Louis wakes up the next morning surprisingly  _not_  hungover, probably because almost all of the alcohol in his body had effectively worn off before he went to bed.  He looks down to see Harry’s dark, messy curls contrasting with his own white t-shirt as Harry continues to slumber peacefully on his chest. 

He strokes his hand through Harry’s hair and gazes up at the top of the four-poster bed, feeling like he’s going to absolutely burst with happiness.  They’re not a hundred percent recovered from the events of December, not at all, but Louis feels pure hope well up in his chest and lodge itself somewhere in his throat.

“Harry,” he whispers, his desire not to disturb Harry becoming overpowered by his need for the bathroom, “Harry, get off, I need a wee.”

“Mmph,” snuffles Harry, lifting his head up.  He’s left a little spot of drool on Louis’s shirt, and some of his hair is stuck to the side of his face.  He looks  _adorable._ “Mmm, morning, love.  Merry Christmas.”

“Yeah, yeah, in a minute, I need to pee,” says Louis, scratching at his scalp affectionately.

Harry makes what sounds like a purring noise and rolls off, burying his face in the pillow after Louis gets up.

After he goes to the toilet, Louis also takes the time to brush his teeth.  On his way back, he notices that it’s a lot brighter outside than it’s been for the past couple of weeks, and he opens the curtains in their room to discover that it’s snowing.  Louis feels as giddy as a child on Christmas morning, which – wait.  Right.

“Harry, it’s snowing,” he whispers excitedly, keeping his voice low so as not to wake their roommates.

“Yaaayy,” Harry says into the pillow.

“It’s a white Christmas!”

“It’ll still be a white Christmas in a couple hours, babe,” Harry says, holding his arm out like he’s trying to magically Summon Louis back into the bed.

“Merry Christmas,” Louis replies happily as he gets back into bed, curving himself around Harry’s body so that he’s the big spoon. 

They fall back asleep for about two hours; when they next wake up, Louis can hear Stan, Max, and Tom bustling around the room, putting on slippers and the like before heading downstairs to check out their presents.

“Harry, wake up,” Louis says, nudging Harry with his knee.  “Everyone’s going downstairs to open presents!”

“Can’t wait to see if I got another tin of shortbread squares from Nan,” says Harry, sliding out of bed with a noise of protest and pulling on a long-sleeved Henley.

“I  _love_  her shortbread squares!” Louis protests, putting on one of Harry’s jumpers over his t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.  “She always uses just the right amount of caramel.”

“I’ll just add that to the list of reasons why she’d rather have you than me as a grandchild,” says Harry.

Louis giggles and, once Harry has stuck his feet into some slippers, they traipse downstairs together, fingers brushing together as they walk.  When they reach the common room, they find that many of their fellow Slytherins have already started tearing open their wrapped gifts but some, like themselves, are still wandering and/or stumbling downstairs (depending on how much they had to drink the night before, undoubtedly).

“Hey, Merry Christmas!” shouts a familiar voice, and Louis turns around happily to see Stan coming toward them.  He opens his arms and pulls Stan into a tight hug, and when Stan pulls back, he’s beaming.

“Good to see you smiling again, Lou,” Stan offers after he and Louis have a silent conversation with just their eyes.  He then turns to Harry.  “Listen, Harry, I’m sorry I was such a prat last night–”

“No, no, it’s mostly my fault, I was being a prat the whole week,” says Harry.  “But everything’s, like, resolved now, so we can just call it even, if you want.”

Stan seems to agree and pulls Harry into a hug as well.  Louis reminds himself to ask about what happened last night, but later.  Now, his main focus is getting to his presents.

He and Harry receive similar greetings from Eleanor, Michael, and a few other Slytherins, and they’re finally nearing the giant tree in the corner of the room when the catcalls start up.

“Oi, look what the Kneazle dragged in!”

“Have a good night, Riach?”

Louis turns around to see Jesy and Danny descending the steps from the Slytherin girls’ dormitories; Jesy is in a fresh set of pyjamas, but Danny is still in his dress robes from the night before.  Louis grins.

“Piss off,” snaps Jesy, but Louis can see her smirk from clear across the room.  She walks Danny to the door amid hoots and yells from the Slytherins, and Louis is strangely happy to have played some role in their hooking up.

After Danny says his goodbyes and Jesy comes back over to the giant Christmas tree, she spots Louis and Harry.  “Merry Christmas!” she chirps, and then seems to realize that they’re stood next to each other and not crying.  “Oh, is everything – good?”

They both nod happily, and she pulls them into a giant hug, laughing as all three of their heads knock together.  “Thank fuck,” Jesy says when she pulls back.  “I was getting worried for a week or two, Christ.   _Now,_ I believe I have presents to open.”

Louis echoes her sentiment, and the three of them finally kneel in front of the tree, sorting through the gifts while each tries to find their own.  Louis and Harry spend the rest of the morning opening presents, pelting each other with the wrapping paper, and hearing stories from last night gradually unfold as their fellow Slytherins relive the Yule Ball.

xxx

After a nice, nutritious lunch of Harry’s nan’s homemade shortbread squares and a few bags of crisps, Harry and Louis are lying on one of the couches in the common room with full bellies as other students nap all around them.  Louis isn’t sure if other houses have communal naps, but it’s definitely one of his favorite things about Slytherin.  It isn’t even exclusive to Christmas – any given afternoon after classes end and before dinner starts one can find ten or more students passed out on the couches, in the armchairs, and on the floor.  Louis often jokes that Zayn should’ve been Sorted into Slytherin because of it.

“Are you tired?” Harry asks him eventually, startling Louis, who’d thought Harry was asleep like everyone else.

“Not really,” Louis replies.  He thinks for a bit, and then asks, “D’you want to go outside and build a snowman?”

 _“Yes,”_  says Harry emphatically. 

“Well, someone’s excited.”

“I haven’t built a snowman since I was eleven,” says Harry.  “Gem used to come home from Beauxbatons in the winters and knock them down whenever I tried to build them.  I eventually just gave up.”

“Gemma!” Louis admonishes the room as a whole.

“Shut it, I’m trying to sleep, here,” comes Stan’s voice from somewhere to their left.

“Sorry, Stan,” Louis whispers back.  “C’mon, Hazza, let’s go get dressed.”

After he and Harry have put on boots, thicker trousers, and several layers of jumpers and outerwear, they venture outside, exiting the Slytherin common room (after maneuvering around their sleeping Housemates), the dungeons, and eventually the castle itself.  It’s still snowing outside, fine white flakes coming down all around them, and the landscape around Hogwarts is pure white as far as Louis can see; even the Dark Forest has received a generous coating of snow, making it look almost cheerful.

“Here’s a good spot,” Harry says, dropping to his knees and starting to gather up snow.  He’s almost maniacal in how fast he works, like years of childhood frustration have all built up inside him and he’s letting it all out now.  Louis wishes he had a camera to capture the manic glint in Harry’s eyes.

Once Louis starts helping him, the snowman comes together absurdly fast; granted, it’s kind of lumpy and misshapen, but no one’s there to see it but them. When it’s finished, Louis  _kind_  of ruins it by giving it a giant snow-penis, which, once completed, actually does manage to defy gravity for a few seconds before breaking off and crumbling to the ground, making them both wince sympathetically.

“Look what you’ve done,” Harry says indignantly, gesturing to the sad snow-stump where the magnificent snow-penis once rose. 

“He had a great few second of fun,” Louis retorts, then gets an even  _better_  idea.  “Want to go flying?”

“I – what?”

Before Harry can say anything else, Louis pulls his wand out and shouts,  _“Accio_   _Dragonflame!”_

It’s a bit less grandiose then he was expecting, given that it takes quite a bit of time for his broom to travel from the locker rooms in the Quidditch pitch, over the castle, and out into the field where they’ve built their masterpiece, but the broom does eventually arrive, none the worse for the wear.

“We’re going flying,” Louis informs Harry.

“This can hold both of us?” Harry asks, frowning.

“’Course it can, it’s a magical broom,” Louis scoffs.  “I know you don’t like flying all that much, but just hold on to me, yeah?  I promise it’ll be fun.”

Harry smiles at him, snowflakes landing in his curls.  “Sounds good to me, then.”

Louis grins breathlessly and gets on the broom, making sure there’s enough room for Harry behind him.  He feels Harry climb on gingerly, and then a pair of warm arms is wrapping around his waist, and – and, absurdly, Louis feels butterflies in his stomach.

“Ready?” he asks.

Harry’s response is hooking his chin over Louis’s shoulder, so a giddy Louis takes that as a yes and pushes his feet off of the ground, and the Dragonflame takes off, a little slower than usual due to its increased load.  Louis can feel snowflakes collecting on his eyelashes as the broom climbs higher and higher, and the frozen wind is whipping at his face but Louis can barely feel it from how delirious he is with happiness. 

“Oh my god, look at the castle,” Harry exclaims from behind him.

Louis turns the broom so they can look at it without turning their heads. It’s certainly a sight; all of the highest towers are covered in a light dusting of snow, fine as powdered sugar, that the wind keeps blowing off and the snow replacing; the lower-lying areas of the castle, like the Great Hall, are blanketed in a thick layer that looks like icing.  It’s beautiful. 

Louis starts to fly circles around it on his broom, going slowly so as to not freak Harry out, but he’s only completed one half-circle when he feels Harry’s cold lips on his neck.  He shivers, but not from the cold.

“Is this okay?” Harry mumbles into his ear.

“Yeah,” Louis breathes out, completely overwhelmed by Harry’s lips on his skin and warm presence behind him and the beautiful landscape and the affirmation that Harry is  _his,_ now, exclusively  _his._ He turns his head before he can stop himself, and his lips meet Harry’s as they both make a noise of happy surprise.  Harry’s hands twitch on his waist like they want to move along his body, but they don’t; Harry keeps still as their lips slide together, making a little breathless noise into his mouth, and – Jesus, but Louis missed this  _so_ much –

After another minute of snogging, the wind picks up, and suddenly Harry is detaching his mouth from Louis’s with a noise of surprise and shouting, “Lou, look out!”

Louis’s mind decides to return, then, and he realizes that the increased wind he felt on his face was not due to the wind actually moving faster so much as it was due to their  _broom_  moving faster; Louis must not be as good as multitasking as he thought he was, because his distracted flying now has them hurtling toward the snow-covered trees of the southern forest and the ground underneath them.

“Shit!” he swears, trying to right the broom in time to stop them from crashing into the treetops – but it’s too late, there’s too much weight on the broom, and he can only slow their impact as they hit the treetops.

Harry’s hands leave his waist almost immediately, and Louis wishes he could reach out for Harry but he’s trying to simultaneously keep a grip on his broom and shield his eyes from the branches.  After a few uncomfortable seconds of falling through branches that cut at his face and hands, Louis falls about ten more feet and hits the forest floor, his landing cushioned by the couple of inches of snow that’s managed to make it through the dense canopy above.  His broom falls next to him, apparently intact, and after Louis takes a couple of moments to regain his breath after having the wind knocked out of him, the only thing missing is –

“Harry?”

“Up here, Lou,” comes Harry’s voice.

Louis looks up, and – he can’t help but laugh.  Harry is dangling, snagged by his collar on one of the lower branches, and he’s flailing around like a small kitten that’s gotten picked up by its mother.

“Don’t laugh at me,” Harry admonishes him, only he’s laughing too, a little, “help get me down.”

Louis feels in his pocket for his wand, which is blessedly still there; he pulls it out and points it at Harry, muttering,  _“Wingardium Leviosa.”_

Harry’s still flailing around, but now he’s no longer attached to the tree; instead, he’s suspended in the air about six feet off the ground.

“Louis,” Harry urges him, trying for stern and failing miserably.

Louis grins at him, laughing, and wordlessly ends the charm, and when Harry falls he does so almost straight on top of Louis, knocking both of them to the ground.

Louis rolls them over so that he’s lying on top of Harry and thumbs at a cut on the other boy’s cheek.  “Oops,” he says, still giggling, not sounding very sorry at all.

“Hi,” Harry replies, his eyes bright as he brushes a strand of hair away from Louis’s face.  Louis has no choice, then, but to bend down and kiss him, and before long Harry’s hands are smoothing up and down his arms as they kiss each other senseless, their tongues eventually meeting and moving past each other as they reacquaint themselves with each other’s mouths.

xxx

It feels like they don’t ever stop snogging; they have a long break ahead, still, free from classes and responsibilities, and when they’re not eating or hanging out with their friends or playing outside in the snow, Louis and Harry spend a large majority of the next few days attached at the lips.  They never go further than that, for which Louis is grateful, because he still isn’t sure if he feels ready.  Harry does give him massages, though, at least once a day, and Louis lets Harry take his shirt off so that Harry’s warm hands can smooth a light coating of oil on his back and work out the kinks in his muscles.  Harry’s really good at it, too, so Louis enjoys a few days of being absolutely pampered and adored. 

It’s a good thing Louis is so relaxed by Saturday, then, because that’s the day that Durmstrang and Beauxbatons bid them farewell.  Louis hadn’t had a very social December, what with all of the drama going on his life, so he only has a few people that he cares about saying goodbye to; he talks with Zayn and Liam for the rest of the time as Harry says goodbye to the countless other friends and acquaintances he’d managed to make throughout the month.

Louis tries not to let his hackles rise when he sees Nick Grimshaw pull Harry aside to say goodbye, but he can’t help it; it’s like a reflex at this point.  He wonders what they’re saying to each other, what Nick even  _has_  to say, now, but he just takes a deep breath and turns back to his conversation with Zayn and Liam. Louis has _won,_ after all – he’s together with Harry now, and it’s been such a long time coming that nothing is ever going to break them apart again. He’s pretty sure Nick knows this, too, which is why he doesn’t bother interfering with whatever Nick’s trying to say to Harry.

Once the headmasters lead their schools out of the Great Hall and to their boat and carriage, respectively, Harry rejoins their little group, as does a subdued Niall, whose eyes are looking suspiciously wet.  Louis has every intention of pulling Harry into a kiss right in front of everyone, just to remind him of…  _things,_ but Harry beats him to it when he reaches him, kissing him quick and dirty and then pulling back, smiling.

“What was that for?” Louis asks a bit breathlessly.

“Just wanted to remind you I’m yours,” says Harry.  Niall makes a gagging noise, but Louis positively  _beams._

“Alright, Niall?” Liam asks, pulling him into a hug.

“I guess,” says Niall glumly.  “I mean, Ellie promised to stay in touch, but I just – I really hope she does, okay, because I really liked that one.”

“Aww, that’s probably as close to an admission of love as we’re ever gonna hear from you,” coos Zayn.

“Piss  _off.”_

“Guys, look what Nick gave me!” Harry cuts in quickly.  He holds out a thick, folded piece of parchment.  “He said that it got handed down to him when he was in his fifth year, and he got kicked out of Hogwarts too suddenly to will it to anyone else.  But – now I have it.”

Louis frowns.  “What exactly is it?”

“I’ll show you,” says Harry excitedly.  He takes out his wand, points it at the parchment, and mutters, “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”

Ink begins to appear on the parchment, first in large blotches and then organizing into words. 

Zayn cranes his head and reads aloud, “‘Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs proudly present the Marauder’s Map.’  What in Merlin’s name–”

“Look!” Harry interrupts him, unfolding the map to reveal a complete model of Hogwarts.  “It shows you where everyone is at all times, and how they’re moving, and it even has all the secret passages and stuff on it.”

“Jesus,” mutters Liam.

“That’s sick,” says Niall.

“He was hoarding it for three years? What an arse,” says Louis.

Harry laughs.  “Now we have it, though, and think about how much  _fun_  we could have with this.”

Louis does.  Now they can monitor how teachers patrol the corridors, to reduce the risk of getting caught sneaking out at night; there are new secret passages they can take to Hogsmeade; and - and this is going to be  _so_  much fun – they can finally figure out who’s hooking up with whom at all hours of the night.

“As Head Boy, I should probably turn that in–” Zayn starts.

 _“Zee,”_ Louis cuts in.

“-but instead I think we should just use it to go to Hogsmeade tomorrow.  Anyone fancy a Butterbeer?”

xxx

By New Years’ Eve, Louis is feeling more comfortable around Harry than ever, possibly even more so than before the whole December mess started.  He just feels so much  _closer_ to him now, emotionally, and he feels like he can truly trust Harry with anything.

At midnight, they share a sweet New Year’s kiss and a bit of a heated snog afterwards, and Louis feels himself start to get hard in his trousers, but before he can start rutting against Harry, Harry breaks it off, leading them back to the drinks table so they can socialize with more people at the party the Hufflepuffs have courteously decided to throw.  Louis talks to other people all night, but he only has eyes for Harry, and suddenly all he can fucking think about (he blames the alcohol) is getting Harry naked and spread out underneath him once more, now that they’re emotionally strong.

At the end of the night, though, nothing ultimately ends up happening, and Louis goes to bed for the first time in several weeks feeling frustrated and horny – in a good way, of course.  Louis has progressed to sleeping in just his pants, so Harry’s bare chest against his back feels like electric flames licking his skin as he’s trying to fall asleep.

Louis eventually does fall asleep, though, and spends most of New Year’s Day with his pants feeling slightly tight.  Every little thing Harry does is arousing to him, now: the way his body moves and the way he combs his hair out of his face with his fingers and the way he closes his eyes in pleasure as he eats vanilla pudding at dinner.

Harry must be reading his mind, or something, because a little while after dinner he asks Louis if he’d like to take a bath together.

“Or just you, if you want,” Harry says.  “Zayn gave me the password to the prefects’ bathroom this morning, and I just thought it’d be nice to do something relaxing before classes start again.  If you want I can just give you the password and–”

“No,” Louis interrupts him, “no, I want – I want to do it together. Plus I already _have_ the password because I’m a Quidditch captain, silly.”

Harry grins at him and holds out his hand; Louis takes it and they begin to walk to the central staircase landing together.

“So, what put you in the mood for a  _bath?”_ asks Louis.

“Oh, well, um – so, like, the day after Christmas, Zayn gave me this book – I think he got it from the Restricted Section – all about, like, well, technically it’s apparently called BDSM, but about domming and subbing and what to do, like, after.  So that’s why I’ve been giving you massages and stuff, and it said a bath was a good idea too.”

“The massages weren’t your idea?” Louis asks, faux-pouting.

Harry laughs.  “I think we’ve established that I’m a complete idiot when it comes to that sort of thing, so I’m just glad I had a book to help me out.”

They ascend one of the staircases after making sure it isn’t going to change while they’re on it. 

“Well, it’s been really nice,” Louis says, all joking aside.  “Thank you.”

“Course,” Harry replies.  “I told you, I care about you, like – I care about you so much.”

Louis squeezes Harry’s hand a little tighter as the prefects’ bathroom draws closer.  When they reach the door, Harry says, “Erumpent.”

Louis hasn’t used the prefects’ bathroom in several weeks, but it looks just the same as he remembers it.  The central feature of the large room is an enormous tub, with dozens of different faucets – almost as large as a pool, actually. 

Harry locks the door behind them and says, “I’ve always heard that this is the best bathtub in the whole school.  Even better than Zayn’s, apparently, he says he uses this one when he really wants to relax.”

“Well, now that I know about Zayn’s bathing habits,” says Louis, trying to lighten up the mood a bit. Harry snorts.

Louis begins to slowly strip off his clothes as Harry turns on the faucets tier by tier using his wand; he’s down to just his pants by the time Harry starts to take off his clothes, but – fuck, he’s still nervous, still can’t quite bring himself to take off that last barrier between his naked body and Harry’s eyes.  Louis hesitates, just a bit, but when he sees Harry take off his pants and gets his first look in a long time at Harry’s cock, already half-hard, he feels heat curl in his lower belly and gets the last bit of confidence he needs to bare everything.  Harry’s half-hard already because of  _him._

“Lou,” Harry breathes quietly, “Lou, you look so good.”

Louis blushes, not sure he’s ever felt quite this shy before, and gets in the water, looking at Harry all the while and feeling his own cock start to perk up from the hot water and Harry’s even hotter stare.

“Get in here,” Louis breathes before he can lose confidence, and Harry answers with a grin and a splash as he hops into the bath.

Their bodies immediately find each other, and Louis wraps his arms around Harry’s neck as their lips meet, the kiss quickly turning filthy as Louis fucks his tongue into Harry’s mouth and Harry moans, sucking on it in return.  Louis pushes at Harry’s shoulders as he’s kissing, loving how easily the other boy goes, how easily Louis can push him around, before Harry’s back finally comes into contact with a wall of the tub.  Harry’s knees buckle as Louis licks more firmly into his mouth, and he ends up sitting down on the ledge that lines this side of the tub, which lets Louis climb on top of him and into his lap.

The moment their bare cocks brush together, both of them moan into each other’s mouths, because it’s been so damn  _long_  since they’ve done this but it’s  _much_  better that they waited until now, waited until Louis was ready.  Louis brings his hips forward again, and it takes only a couple more thrusts before Harry brings one large hand down to wrap around both of their cocks.

“Feels so good,” Harry moans, detaching his mouth from Louis’s to get a breath in.  “Oh god, Lou–”

Watching Harry fall apart underneath him is even better than Louis remembered it being, the way his face becomes so open and honest and his eyebrows scrunch together, the way he bites his lip to hold in all the little whimpers he makes.  Louis isn’t sure how Harry can look so  _cute_  while he’s helping bring himself to orgasm at the same time, and then –

And then.

Louis realizes why he’s having these fond thoughts about Harry even while he’s building closer and closer to his peak.  He remembers what he told Niall that day at the pub, and before he’s even thinking about it he’s blurting out, “Harry, there’s – oh, fuck, oh my god – something I need to tell you.”

“Mmm?” Harry asks, distracted, as he thumbs along the ridge of skin at the top of Louis’s shaft, just under the head of his cock.  Louis’s eyes roll back in his head and he arches his back, staring at the ceiling as Harry wanks them both off, bring them both closer to coming.

It’s when Harry’s wet mouth closes around one of his nipples that Louis completely fucking loses it, the warm suction on the sensitive bud too much for him to take without crying out, “I – oh god, Harry, I love you, I love you–”

Harry pulls off of Louis’s nipple with a gasp, but Louis doesn’t even notice because he’s coming  _hard,_ tightening his thighs around Harry’s upper thighs and hips as his back arches even more and he shoots into the bathwater, coating Harry’s hand with it.

“You love me?” breathes Harry, his hand moving faster on himself once he’s let go of Louis’s cock.  “You – love me–”

“Yeah,” Louis replies, too emotionally exhausted to even consider retracting his statement.  “Yeah, Hazza, I love you.”

Harry looks up at him, and their eyes meet, Harry’s startlingly wide and open.  “You – oh, fuck, I love you too,” Harry babbles, never breaking eye contact as he starts to push himself over the edge, “oh my god, I love you, I love you, Merlin,  _fucking – Christ–”_

Louis can see it in Harry’s eyes, when he starts to come – Harry has to fight to keep them open, his eyelashes fluttering as his abs clench and his cock spurts between their bodies.  Halfway through, he stops fighting it, his eyes falling closed as he leans forward and bites at Louis’s other nipple.  Louis groans and lets Harry suck at him as he works himself through his orgasm, little groaning sounds emanating from his throat as he moves his hand over himself.

When Harry’s drawn back and both of them have caught their breath, Harry says, “I love you.  Jesus, you have no idea how long I’ve waited to say that, Lou.  I dunno if I’ll be able to stop saying it now.”

“We don’t even have to use words, I guess,” says Louis.  “Beyond ‘I love you.’”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

They say it again and again for the next five minutes but, unlike most phrases, it doesn’t start to lose its meaning after being said hundreds of times; no, instead it seems to grow more profound each time they say it until, overwhelmed, Louis shuts both of them up by bringing their mouths together again, and they continue to speak with lips and tongues instead of words until the bathwater runs cold.

xxx

When classes start up again, Louis tackles them headfirst with a spring in his step, feeling like he’s absolutely on top of the world.  All of his and Harry’s friends have started complaining about their ‘honeymoon phase,’ but Louis can tell that they don’t mind, not really – everybody seems to be a bit happier around them, now, like seeing the two of them together again and stronger than ever has righted some sort of imbalance in the universe.  It’s probably nowhere near that cosmic, but.  Louis can romanticize, certainly.

In the afternoon, the Slytherins have Care of Magical Creatures with the Ravenclaws, and so Louis makes the trek to Hagrid’s hut with Harry and Zayn.  Zayn’s been rolling his eyes at them all week, but, again, Louis knows he’s secretly very happy.  Plus, Louis tolerated it when Zayn was in his honeymoon phase with Liam, so he thinks a bit of tolerance is due to him, simply as common courtesy.

Hagrid leads them into the Dark Forest today – “Jus’ a lil’ bit in, away from any pryin’ eyes” – and, when they get to a clearing, they discover some sort of official-looking animal handler and, in a cage, a large three-headed snake.

Harry tenses next to him and Louis grabs his hand; even though it seems a bit ridiculous, considering he’s a Slytherin, Harry has a terrible fear of snakes.  He leads them to a spot near the back in front of a large tree, not wanting Harry to get too stressed out.

Once the entire class has gathered, all craning their heads to get a look at the creature in the cage, Hagrid begins his lecture.  “Now, this here’s called a Runespoor.  This one’s a bit on the small side – ‘s only six feet, and normally they grow up to seven.”

“Professor,” Zayn asks from Louis’s other side, “I thought Runespoors were a Class XXXX beast?  Aren’t they incredibly dangerous?”

“Ah, but you see, Zayn,” says Hagrid, “where they come from, in Africa, it’s awful hot and humid, and they’re cold-blooded, see, so when you bring ‘em ‘ere in the winter, the cold really gets to ‘em, slows ‘em down and all that.  This one’s practically harmless.  But, we do have a handler who’s come ‘ere from Africa with it, just in case.”

Zayn still doesn’t look convinced, and Hagrid must be able to tell, because he continues, “Look, see, let’s just open up his cage, and you’ll see, he can barely stay awake.”

The three-headed snake does indeed appear sluggish as it’s let out of its cage, the handler following along behind it as it slithers out onto the snow. 

“Now, the Runespoor’s the only known magical creature to lay its eggs through its mouth, which is interesting because…”

The rest of Hagrid’s lecture sort of fades from Louis’s consciousness as he watches the snake move, hyperaware of Harry shaking in fear next to him.  The three heads seem to be looking in very different directions, and students are moving away from it as it slithers, even after Hagrid’s assurance that it’s completely harmless.

“…and we don’t know much about snakes, but what we’ve learned from wizards who can talk to ‘em seems to be that the left head – that one right there – is the one that plans what the beast does, where it goes and all that, and the center head – you can see it, yeah – is the head that’s focused on dreamin’ and imagination…”

The snake is moving, slowly but steadily, in the direction of Harry, Louis, and Zayn; the students in front of them are parting quickly to let it pass.

“…and the right one, that’s the nasty one – it’s the venomous one, and the one that can sense fear in its prey.  It seeks out fear, right, so what you’ve gotta do is act like you’re not afraid of it, like you don’ care that it’s there.  It’ll move right on if you do.”

“Um,” Louis says.  Harry has started legitimately whimpering next to him, backing up until he can’t anymore due to the thick tree trunk behind him.  The snake is continuing on its path, obviously seeking out Harry at this point, and although it isn’t moving very fast, it’s clearly moving with intent.

“Who’s that in the back? That you, Louis?”

“Um, yes, sir,” says Louis.  “I’m not sure if you remember, but Harry’s kind of majorly afraid of snakes, sir.”

“Some Slytherin you turned out to be,” comes Tom Parker’s voice from somewhere in the crowd.  Some of the Slytherins titter.

“Easy now,” says Hagrid.  “Oi, call it back, then.”

Louis watches, still monitoring the snake’s progress, as the handler draws out a whistle from his coat pocket.  He blows into it; no sound comes out, as far as Louis can tell, but it must be a noise only the snake is able to hear.

Actually, maybe not, because the whistle is completely ineffective at halting the snake’s progress toward Harry; it begins hissing, even, rearing up a little bit, and although Louis pulls Harry, paralyzed with fear, away from the tree, the snake seems to follow them wherever they go.

“I said call it back!” Hagrid says sharply.  The handler looks panicked.

“Make it stop, make it stop,” Harry is saying, tears starting to leak from his eyes as the snake follows him.  “Please, please, make it stop–”

Louis can’t stand this a second longer.  He steps in front of Harry, looking the Runespoor’s right head dead in the eye, and barks, “Oi, stop right there!”

Surprisingly, the snake halts right in its tracks.  The entire group of students gasps.

“Leave him alone, for Chrissake,” Louis continues, glad the snake seems to be recognizing the emotion in his voice, or something.  It certainly has to know that he’s not afraid of it, after all.  “Leave him alone and go back to your cage.  I’m not afraid of you.”

Even  _more_  amazingly, the snake bows its head, a bit, and turns back the way it came, slithering slowly into its cage and letting the stunned handler latch the door.

“That worked well,” Louis says brightly, expecting some sort of response.

He doesn’t get one.  The entire group of students, plus Hagrid and the handler, are gaping at him, including Harry and Zayn.

“What’s wrong with you all?” Louis asks.

“Louis, you – you didn’t hear yourself?” Zayn asks.

“You were  _talking_  to it,” Harry says with a shudder.

“Well, yeah, just made it clear that I wasn’t afraid to put it in its place,” Louis says jokingly.

No one laughs. 

“No, Lou, you were, like…  _talking_  to it,” Harry repeats.

“I don’t understand?” says Louis. It comes out as a question.

“Louis, you were speaking its  _language,”_  says Zayn.  “You were speaking Parseltongue!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BUM BUM BUMMM
> 
> questions? comments? concerns? Feel free to leave a comment! However, I have to ask that plot speculations be left in my [tumblr](http://povverbottoms.tumblr.com) inbox only to avoid other people seeing them and spoiling it for them, if you're right! Thank you !! *smooch*
> 
> P.S. sorry for the several sappy references I left throughout (did you catch the combination of their patronuses??)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zayn does some research, he and Liam try something new, and everything is blissful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you follow me on tumblr, you know that I experienced my very first case of writer's block for YATB this month. I apologize profusely for getting this chapter out so late, but here it is! It's very porn-heavy to make up for me being terrible. The action really picks up next chapter, which should come out a lot sooner!

“You were speaking Parseltongue!”

“I was speaking what?” Louis asks incredulously.  Zayn can’t believe it, either – Parselmouths are usually dark wizards.

“You’re a Parselmouth, Louis,” Zayn tells him gently, quietly.  No one else is saying a word, and he kind of wishes Hagrid would get his shit together and continue on with the lesson, whatever it was going to be.  “You can communicate with snakes.”

Louis looks confused, almost like he’s in shock.  Zayn doesn’t blame him.  Before Louis can ask Zayn anything else, Jaymi Hensley speaks up loudly, “Professor, I have a question about how the three heads manage to coexist in one body and share limited resources.  Does it always work?”

Merlin bless Jaymi.

There’s a pause, and then Hagrid seems to be startled out of whatever internal monologue he’s having.  “Oh, er – right.  Well, I told yeh about how the head on the right is the nasty one, yeah?  So, sometimes…”

“What do you mean I can  _communicate_  with them?” Louis hisses in Zayn’s ear as the students start to pay attention to Hagrid again.  “A snake’s never tried to hold a bloody conversation with me before.”

“’Cause you’ve never initiated one,” Zayn whispers back.  “I bet if you asked this one a question after class it’d answer you.”

Louis shudders.  “No way am I doing that.  Jesus.”

They’re silent for the rest of the lesson as Hagrid explains to them the great lengths that wizards have gone to make the Runespoor’s presence in Burkina Faso go unnoticed (which is an impressive feat, given how large the snake is), making large areas of forest unplottable to Muggles for the Runespoor’s use.  After the class period is over, the students begin to leave, exiting into open air with relief as they leave the Dark Forest.

Louis, Harry, and Zayn are some of the first to leave, Louis walking quickly away and Harry and Zayn hurrying to catch up with him.  Zayn hears footfalls behind them and turns around to see Tom Parker jogging up to them.

“Hey, Louis, wait!” Tom calls.

That’s odd.  Tom’s never called Louis by his first name before.  The most polite thing he’s ever called Louis is “Tomlinson.”  Zayn frowns.

Louis turns around and Harry mirrors him.  “What do you want?” Louis asks warily, running a hand through his fringe.

“I just, um – I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” says Tom, finally catching up to them.  “I’ve been really awful to you the whole time we’ve been here because I thought you got Sorted into Slytherin by accident.”

Louis doesn’t respond.  He looks bewildered.

“And to think I was worried that Mudbloods were going to start polluting our House,” Tom continues, laughing, “Merlin, was I wrong.  I guess you can’t help what your mother is, but, hell, you’re probably more deserving of being in Slytherin than  _any_  of the rest of us, seeing as you’re his–”

“Shut  _up,”_  Harry hisses, stepping forward.  “Shut up, Tom, you’re being a prat.”

“What?” asks Tom.  “I’m telling him I want to apologize and be friends.”

“Yeah, only because now you know his father’s a wizard,” says Harry, “not because you actually care about him.  Don’t you know how awful you’re being?”

“But his father’s not  _just_  a wizard,” Tom continues, confused, “he’s a descendent of–”

“Not another word,” Harry spits, drawing his wand and pointing it between Tom’s eyes.  “Don’t talk to him if you’re gonna be a dick, and if you think you’re being nice then I feel fucking  _sorry_  for you.”

With that, Harry grabs Louis’s hand and spins both of them around, pulling a frozen and shocked Louis toward the warmth and safety of the castle.  Zayn is left staring at Tom, who’s staring back at him in shock. 

“Harry’s right, you know,” Zayn tells him.  “Plus you just insulted Lou’s mum.”

With that, Zayn turns around and walks up toward the castle, leaving Tom behind.  He breaks into a run halfway up the hill to catch up with Harry and Louis.

Once they’re inside and are able to shake the cold out of their bones, Louis finally speaks.  “What did – what did he mean about my father?”

There’s a pause as neither Zayn nor Harry speaks.  Then, Zayn says, “Well, almost all Parselmouths are descended from–”

“Zayn,” Harry interrupts him sharply.

“He’s going to find out eventually, Harry,” Zayn tells him, pulling off his scarf as the three of them walk to the dungeons.  “Better to find out from a friend, I think.”

Harry doesn’t respond to that, just takes Louis’s hand in his, which Zayn interprets as his go-ahead.  “Anyway, almost every single documented Parselmouth is a descendant of Slytherin himself.”

“Slytherin – like, Slytherin the Hogwarts founder?” asks Louis weakly.

“Yeah, Salazar Slytherin.  The only exception that anybody knows of is Harry Potter, and that’s because a piece of You-Know-Who’s soul was latched onto his.  It’s not anymore, and so he can’t speak Parseltongue anymore.”

Louis makes a small helpless noise and cuddles closer into Harry.  “You’re probably terrified of me now, too,” he mumbles into Harry’s armpit, sounding overwhelmed, like he doesn’t want to acknowledge what Zayn’s just told him.  “Since I c’n talk to snakes, and all.”

“Course not,” Harry chides him, throwing an arm around his shoulders.  “You can tell them to stop targeting me, now, so if you weren’t already my favorite person you would be now.”

Louis still grumbles a bit, leaning into Harry and looking generally overwhelmed.  Zayn knows this must be a lot for Louis to process right now – hell, it’s a lot for  _Zayn_  to process, and he’s not even the one finding out about his long-lost heritage.

By dinner that night, the whole school is buzzing with the news that Louis Tomlinson can speak Parseltongue.  Zayn’s already sitting with Liam at the Gryffindor table when Louis and Harry walk into the Great Hall, and he can see the Gryffindors around him visibly shrink back and start gossiping.  The Hufflepuffs do the same thing, the Ravenclaws mostly look intrigued, and the Slytherins all seem to converge on Louis excitedly once he and Harry have sat down at their table.

Zayn frowns.  He isn’t sure how much damage control he’s supposed to be doing – most of the school isn’t aware that Louis never actually knew his real father.  Louis doesn’t like talking about it, anyway, so Zayn wouldn’t feel comfortable informing people of this, either, even if it would reduce the rumors Zayn can already hear starting that Louis actually comes from a long line of dark wizards.

“It’s all rubbish,” Niall says, cutting off another piece of pork tenderloin.  “Everyone liked him before, said he was too nice to be in Slytherin and all that, and now they’re acting like he’s the second coming of You-Know-Who. Fucking ridiculous.”

“I keep hearing increasingly ridiculous rumors about him,” says Liam, squeezing Zayn’s hand sympathetically.  Zayn frowns, feeling angry and upset.

Zayn’s about to suggest they bring up a different topic of conversation – one not currently shared by the  _entire school_  – when he hears Andy Samuels say loudly from about halfway down the Gryffindor table, “I hear he’s got Harry Styles under a love potion, just like You-Know-Who’s mum had his dad.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” mutters Zayn, grabbing two extra rolls and shoving them in the pockets before standing up abruptly from the table and striding away.  “You’re a fucking idiot,” he adds to Andy as he passes him, heading for the Great Hall’s exit.  He can’t stand another minute listening to the things people are saying about his best friend.

As he crosses through the huge doors, Zayn turns back to look at Louis.  He doesn’t look too upset – he seems like he’s answering questions from a couple younger Slytherins.  Ironically, the Slytherin table is probably the best place for Louis to be right now.  Zayn shakes his head, disgusted, and continues on his way.  He’s not really sure where he wants to go – anywhere but here, really.

After Zayn turns a corner, he hears footfalls behind him, like someone’s running to catch up.  He prickles, not really in the mood to talk to anyone right now, but then he hears Liam’s voice call, “Zayn!  Zayn, wait up!”

Zayn stops, still feeling tense, but then he feels his boyfriend’s arms wrap around him from behind and he feels all of the anger melt right out of him.

“Hey,” Liam murmurs into his hair, his warm torso pressing against Zayn’s back, “hey, love, what’s wrong?”

That’s a good question.  Nothing’s wrong with Zayn himself – rather, he’s burning with anger, sadness, and humiliation on his best friend’s behalf.

“I just – couldn’t stand hearing that anymore,” he says shortly, turning around in Liam’s arms and burying his face in Liam’s neck.

“About Louis?”

Zayn nods.  He just feels so helpless, and – Louis is always getting shit for some reason or another, and Zayn’s always felt fiercely protective of him, ever since Louis was one of the first people to reach out to him when he was new at school.

“Why do people have to be so horrible to him?” Zayn mumbles into Liam’s throat.  He sounds like a child, pouty and whining about things he can’t control, but this is something that’s been bothering him for a while and for some reason it’s all coming to a head right now.  Probably because Louis has been the happiest Zayn had ever seen him for the past week or so, and now something had to come along and ruin it.

Liam doesn’t respond, just strokes his hands over Zayn’s back.  It feels nice.

“He just – he’s so great,” Zayn continues, aware that he’s sounding sappy as all hell but unaware of how to correct it.  “And sometimes I feel like he just can’t catch a break.”

“It’ll work out,” Liam tells him, rubbing his back some more.  “My mum always says fortune’s like a wheel, and you have to be down before you can go up.  Are you – are you crying?”

Zayn is most definitely  _not_  sniffling into Liam’s robes.  “N-no.”

“Zayn,” Liam coos, drawing back so he can grip Zayn’s shoulders.  Zayn looks into his warm brown eyes through a blurry haze of tears and huffs out a wet laugh.

“Sorry, I just – fuck.  I love him a lot, you know?”

“I know,” says Liam, smiling, as he thumbs a tear track off of Zayn’s face.  “You’re sweet.”

“Shut up,” Zayn laughs, burying his face in Liam’s chest again.  “I don’t – it’s stupid.  I’m being stupid.  Shut up.”

“S’not stupid,” Liam insists.  “But I can shut up, if you’d like.”

Zayn nods quietly, trying to figure out why he’s so emotional all of a sudden.  It probably has to do with the fact that he wants to tuck Louis under his arm and hex anyone who says a single bad word about him.  Fuck, he can’t even imagine what Harry must be feeling now.

“Do you… do you want to go back to your common room?” Liam asks hesitantly.

“I was thinking about going to the library,” Zayn tells him, drawing back after he’s made sure that no more tears are going to accidentally escape.  “Maybe look up known Parselmouthss in the last fifty years, or something.”

“Yeah, I guess that narrows the search for his dad down quite a bit,” admits Liam.  On New Year’s, Louis had felt comfortable enough to tell Liam and Niall about his family situation, which Zayn had been very happy about because he hadn’t liked keeping secrets from Liam, even if they weren’t his to tell.  “Can I come with you?”

“Of course,” Zayn says, grabbing his hand.  “Like you even had to ask.”

“I don’t know,” protests Liam as they start to walk toward the library.  “Wasn’t sure if you’d gotten into one of your weird leave-me-the-fuck-alone library moods.”

“I don’t have those!” scoffs Zayn.  He doesn’t have those.  Definitely not.

Liam side-eyes him silently until they both burst into laughter.  “You’re not the one who had to deal with you before winter exams,” Liam says.  “Although, to be fair, I did do a lot better than usual on those because you kept forcing me to study.”

They make a quick pit-stop in Gryffindor Tower so that Liam can grab some schoolwork to do and then they’re off to the library.  Zayn leads Liam to his favorite secluded corner, away from the relative loudness and chatter of the main study area, and selects a small table with two big, comfy armchairs right next to it. 

Zayn has taken to sitting in Liam’s lap whenever they study – hey, Liam’s much more comfortable than any upholstery, plus Zayn can tease him whenever he wants – but he supposes that he should let Liam write his essay on, say, a flat table surface rather than on Zayn’s back.  Sigh.  After Liam’s gotten himself situated in one of the chairs and Zayn’s thrown his robe over the other one to stake his claim, Zayn wanders off into the stacks to try and find some books that could be helpful.

Ten minutes later, Zayn returns to their corner clutching  _Salazar Slytherin: The Complete Biography; Notable Parselmouths, Middle Ages to Present Day; Wizarding Families Descended From Hogwarts Founders; Encyclopedia of Snakes;_ and _I Taught Myself Parseltongue, and You Can Too!_

“You’ve got your work cut out for you,” murmurs Liam, eyeing the stack.  “Don’t you have any assignments due tomorrow?”

“Just a foot of parchment for Transfiguration,” Zayn shrugs, settling into the armchair and cracking open the first book.  “I’ll get it done after this, it’s fine.”

Liam shrugs and opens his ink bottle as Zayn scans the table of contents. 

Thirty minutes later, all Zayn’s really learned from Slytherin’s biography is that, when Salazar Slytherin was still involved in Hogwarts’ affairs and handpicking his students, he chose them for their resourcefulness, cleverness, determination, and slight disregard for the rules.  Zayn is now more certain than ever that Louis belongs in Slytherin, but that’s really not helpful in terms of figuring out who his father was. 

By the time Zayn has completely combed  _Notable Parselmouths, Middle Ages to Present Day,_ it’s nearing curfew and he’s getting frustrated.  The book focuses far too much on the Gaunt family and the fact that they were the ones who produced Slytherin’s one true heir, Tom Riddle, and far less on other, less famous Parselmouths who might be related to Louis.  Zayn had looked especially hard for any mentions of the family name “Austin,” but not a single individual in that book was named Austin.  Edward Austin is still a complete mystery of a person and now Zayn is getting tired.

“Why don’t you take a break, love? You’ve been at it for hours,” murmurs Liam.  He finished whatever he was working on about half an hour ago and he’s been lazily flipping through the encyclopedia of snakes ever since, waiting for Zayn to finish reading.

“M’not done,” mumbles Zayn, rubbing at his eyes and reaching for the next book.

“Just a little one? A kissing break?” asks Liam.

Zayn can hear a bit of longing in his tone.  A kissing break sounds nice, actually.  Just a few kisses, though, and then Zayn should get back to work. 

Apparently Zayn’s too slow in responding, though, because Liam is suddenly getting out of his chair and climbing onto Zayn’s lap instead.  He almost crushes the old, worn volume that Zayn is still holding, so Zayn spares a few seconds to make sure it’s placed on the desk safely out of the way before wrapping his arms around Liam, sliding his hands up and down Liam’s back happily.

“Hi,” Liam says softly.  “You work too much.”  He bends down and rubs their noses together.

“M’sorry,” Zayn sighs, kissing his boyfriend lightly on the lips. 

“It’s not a bad thing, always,” admits Liam.  “It’s cute, actually.”

Zayn frowns.  “Cute?”

“Well, not  _cute,_  maybe, but it’s nice.  You’re, like, passionate about stuff,” Liam says, thumbing at his cheek.

Zayn blushes, ready to look away shyly, but Liam leans forward and kisses him before he can avert his eyes.  He sighs happily and lets Liam tease the seam of his lips with his tongue before parting his lips.  Zayn tilts his head and closes his eyes, making a hungry sound as his hands make their way down to rest where Liam’s uniform shirt is tucked into his slacks.  Liam moans softly and shifts a little on his lap, fisting a hand in Zayn’s hair and pulling a bit to move Zayn’s head to the angle he wants.

Zayn grins into the kiss, loving how confident and wanton Liam’s gotten, especially during the holidays when they’d had hours on end to explore each other’s bodies with no other obligations.

They kiss lazily for a few more minutes, tucked away in their own private little nook in the library, and then Liam pulls away only to attack Zayn’s neck with his lips.

“Li –  _Liam,”_  Zayn gasps out, pleased, as Liam bites at his neck.  His hands dip lower to squeeze at Liam’s bum through his trousers, wishing they were in his bedroom so he could slip them off and then get his mouth around Liam’s cock.

Their snog becomes infinitely more heated, though, when Liam shifts around in Zayn’s lap again and Zayn’s fingers end up nestled between his bum cheeks, practically brushing over his hole through his trousers.  Zayn is ready to start stammering out apologies – they’ve never done  _that_ before – but then Liam moans and sucks harder on his neck, pushing back into Zayn’s hands.

“Liam?” Zayn asks softly, drawing out the vowels.  His half-hard cock is filling up even more at how responsive Liam’s being.

“Want it,” Liam mumbles into Zayn’s neck.

Zayn’s heart almost stops.  “Mmm?”

“Want it,” Liam repeats, shyly hiding his face in Zayn’s neck now as he pushes into Zayn’s fingers.  “I’ve never – but – I just–”

“Fuck,” Zayn moans, pulling on Liam’s shoulders until he can see his face again.  Liam is bright red, his eyes locked on Zayn’s lips and his cock hard against Zayn’s.  “You want this?” he asks softly, pressing against Liam’s hole more firmly through his slacks just to make sure he’s understanding correctly. 

Liam’s eyes flutter closed and he bites his lip to stifle a moan.   _Fuck._   “Y-yeah.”

“Okay,” says Zayn slowly, not wanting to mess this up when he’s getting a chance to find a new way to take Liam apart.  “Okay, but not here.”

Liam snorts, eyes still closed.  “Obviously.  We, um – we don’t have to if you don’t want to, I just–”

Zayn kisses him on the nose.  “Merlin, of course I want to, fuck.”

“Good,” says Liam, smiling as he rocks back into Zayn’s hand.  He tips his head back, his eyelashes fanning out over the soft skin under his eyes.  “’Cause I really,  _really_  want your fingers inside me.”

Okay, now Zayn’s heart  _actually_  stops.  “Li,” he breathes, impressed and scandalized and so,  _so_  turned on because he’s wanted that for  _ages_ and now they’re in the  _library,_ of all places – “Yeah, fuck, okay – let’s go–”

They snog frantically for a few more seconds before Liam climbs off of him, his cheeks pink and his smile overwhelmed.  Zayn’s whole body is thrumming with excitement at how much he has to show Liam, at how much Liam  _doesn’t know yet._

Zayn normally reshelves books himself, not wanting to provide extra unnecessary work for the librarian, but he can’t be bothered to tonight, not when he’s got his boyfriend practically begging for his fingers for the very first time.  So, as they hurry out of the library, Zayn deposits the book on the “Unshelved Books” cart with one hand as he sneakily pinches Liam’s bum with the other.

Liam squeaks, earning them a sharp look from the librarian, and Zayn just grins and leads him into the corridors.

They make their way to Zayn’s room very, very slowly because they stop to make out every thirty seconds, pressing each other against the cold stone walls of the castle to lick into each other’s mouths.  Some of the corridors are only lit by a few flickering torches that Zayn can see reflected in Liam’s eyes whenever they look over at each other, buzzing and excited. 

By the time they get to Zayn’s common room they’ve adopted a sort of giddy half-sprint, blurting out the password hastily and shoving inside the portrait hole once the painting starts to swing open.  They pass Perrie, Jade, Jesy and Leigh-Anne, all of whom appear to be knitting, sprawled on the couches by the fire.

“Oh, no, don’t stop and say hello,” Jesy drawls as Zayn and Liam half-sprint over to the staircase.

“Got somewhere to be?” Leigh-Anne adds, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I, um–” Zayn stammers out, slowing almost to a halt as he tries to think of something to say.

“He’s, um.  Help,” adds Liam, not much better off. Both of them are still catching their breath, breathing heavily from exertion and excitement.  With that informative declaration, both of them start to run up the stairs, grabbing at each other playfully as they stumble into Zayn’s room.

“Zayn,” Liam gasps, pinning him to the closing door and grinding their hips together.  Zayn’s still half-hard from the library and Liam is as well, and Zayn shudders as a little jolt of pleasure shoots from his cock up his spinal cord.

“You’ve thought – about this – a lot?” Zayn asks Liam between kisses, sucking on his tongue hungrily.  “Thought about my fingers inside you?”

Liam moans, letting Zayn flip them around so he’s the one pressing Liam to the door.  “Yeah, I – yeah, fuck.  And the – other way around, like, just us – all over each other.”

There are times when Zayn literally can’t even believe Liam is real – he’s so, so innocent but he’s too sexual for his own good.   He feels Liam’s big, warm hands slide down his back and bites at Liam’s lip at the thought of Liam fingering  _him,_ how tentative and careful it would be, the adorable look of concentration on his determined face.

He feels Liam sliding his robe off of his shoulders, and that snaps Zayn back into reality because his boyfriend is literally undressing him and all he’s been doing is thinking of the things they could be doing when they could, in fact,  _actually be doing them right now._   Zayn presses one last peck to Liam’s kiss-swollen lips before pulling back, slipping Liam’s robe off of his shoulders and then laughing when both of them get tangled in trying to get the other one’s clothes off.

“If you’d just let me–” Liam starts, his brow furrowed.

“You’re in the way,” Zayn tells him, smiling angelically at Liam’s outraged expression in response.  He leans in close to Liam’s ear, then, and whispers, “Let me take care of you, Li.”

That gets Liam’s attention, and the next second Zayn feels Liam’s fingers drop from his sleeves as Liam tilts his head back to rest it against the door with a soft, “Fuck.”

Zayn grins and doesn’t waste any time in divesting both of them of their robes.  Liam’s uniform shirt is the next to go, exposing the pink flush that’s spread from his face to his neck all the way down to his toned chest and making Zayn’s head spin.

“Bed,” Zayn murmurs, drawing back altogether to start undoing all of the damn buttons on his own stupid shirt.  Clothes are stupid. 

When he finally gets the shirt off, Liam has already fallen onto his bed, spreading out on his back and palming himself through his slacks.  He looks absolutely indecent. 

“Can’t finger you with your trousers on,” Zayn tells him lowly, removing his own slacks. 

Liam lets out a soft little moan and closes his eyes, fiddling with the button on his trousers.  Zayn watches him fumble with his clothes thinks of the lube sitting in his trunk right in the corner of the room, thinks of his fingers shiny with it, pushing in and out of Liam’s tight, virgin little hole.  Merlin.

The impressive tent in Liam’s pants commands all of Zayn’s attention once it’s revealed, and the way Liam goes back to pressing down wantonly on it once he’s kicked his trousers off makes Zayn’s blood burn.

Zayn practically trips over his discarded clothes in his haste to get over to the bed, falling on top of Liam with a happy  _oomph_  and wasting no time in slotting their bodies together, slipping a thigh between Liam’s so that Liam can rut up against him while Zayn is straddling one of Liam’s strong thighs, grinding down.  Their mouths connect once more and Liam makes a happy whimpering noise, like it’s almost painful for them to go too long without being attached at the lips.

They’re so hard against each other, so hot together, and it doesn’t take long before Liam is pulling back for air, gasping as he clutches at Zayn’s bum and rocks up into him, and Zayn’s cock is wetting the fabric of his pants with sticky precome.

“You’d better – do it soon–” Liam laughs against Zayn’s lips – “else this is gonna – be over very fast.”

It’s extremely tempting to just rock against Liam until both of them are moaning and coming in their pants, but Zayn just can’t shake the image of his wet fingers sinking into Liam’s hole, and he’d like very much to have a real-life experience to go along with his fantasy.  Plus, Liam is being so desperate and responsive now, more so than he usually is, and Zayn  _loves_  it.

“M’gonna,” he mumbles into Liam’s mouth.  “Get your pants off.”

With a monumental amount of effort, Zayn lifts himself off of Liam and walks over to his trunk, his erection tenting the front of his briefs obscenely.   He would’ve just Summoned the lube, but his wand is somewhere in the pile of his and Liam’s clothes over by the door and Zayn isn’t good enough at wandless magic yet to hope for it to be successful.

Once he’s grabbed the lube, he turns around to walk back to the bed and almost falls over at the sight that greets him.  Liam’s completely naked now, the long line of his strong body stretched out over Zayn’s golden comforter, and he’s got his cock in hand, stroking it up and down slowly with his eyes closed as he bites at his lip.

Zayn wants to  _ruin_  him.

“Babe,” he murmurs, crossing the room swiftly and climbing back onto the bed, “hands off.”

Liam cracks one eye open and frowns at him.  Zayn laughs.  “Won’t you let me take care of you, Liam?”

Liam’s throat bobs as he swallows heavily, and then he’s nodding, taking his hand off his cock and gripping a big fistful of the comforter instead.  “Love you,” he says quietly, swallowing again.

Zayn’s heart does a funny little flip in his chest, just like it does every time he hears Liam say that.  “Love you too.” 

He coaxes Liam to scoot up the bed a couple inches so that Zayn can get in between his legs, and then, just to be cheeky, he sucks the head of Liam’s cock into his mouth while Liam’s eyes are still closed.

 _“Ah,”_  Liam moans, surprised, and his hips jerk up reflexively to try and bury more of himself in Zayn’s mouth.  Zayn pulls off a second later, though, because he’s just teasing, just wants to get Liam worked up and squirming before he fucks him with his fingers.

“No, come back,” Liam whines, laughing, thrusting his hips up into empty air.  The wet head of his cock bobs tantalizingly in front of Zayn’s face, but Zayn has other plans.  Better plans. 

“Thought you wanted my fingers,” says Zayn conversationally, trying not to betray how shaky he’s feeling.

“God, fuck, I do, it’s just – your  _mouth.”_

Zayn laughs, uncapping the lube and squeezing a generous amount onto three of his fingers.  He’s not sure how many Liam’s going to want to take, but he doesn’t want to have to go back in the middle to get more slick.  “Be good and I’ll give you both, yeah?” he tells Liam cheekily, smacking a kiss to the tip of his cock when he’s done.

Liam’s hips jerk up again even as he laughs. 

“Alright, I’m – I’m gonna just touch you a little bit, now,” Zayn continues, not sure how much Liam’s going to want to be coached through this.  He figures he should talk through it at least a little bit, just so Liam knows what to expect and what to do. 

“Okay,” comes Liam’s soft reply.

“Just – just tell me if I’m doing anything you don’t like, alright? And I’ll stop,” Zayn assures him.  He – Merlin, he loves Liam  _so much_  and he wants this to be perfect for him.

“Course.”

After Liam’s response, Zayn coaxes Liam’s thighs up a bit so that his legs are spread, giving Zayn a perfect view of his small, pink hole.  Then, he sucks in a sharp breath and brings one of his wet fingers up to brush against the little ring of muscle.

“Oh,” gasps Liam, his thigh jerking in the hold of Zayn’s dry hand. 

“Just gonna touch you,” Zayn repeats, needing to distract himself from the amazing way Liam reacts to even a single touch.  He teases the tip of his finger around Liam’s hole, getting him used to the feeling and wetting the sparse, downy hairs around his entrance.

Liam’s shaking like a leaf, and his eyes are shut tight, his mouth open, his breathing quick.  After half a minute, though, he starts to push into Zayn’s finger, rolling his hips like he wants to take it inside him.

“Good?” Zayn asks quietly, mouthing at his cock a bit to distract him.

“Yeah, I’m – oh, god,” Liam moans, his dick twitching as he rolls his hips more noticeably.

“Inside?” Zayn asks, pressing a little bit more firmly against Liam’s hole as he brings another finger up to tease him more around the rim.

“Please,” begs Liam, and,  _oh,_  that goes  _straight_  to Zayn’s own cock, trapped between his stomach and the comforter, hard and leaking.

“Okay,” replies Zayn, surprised at how low and rough his voice has gotten, “okay, I’m gonna – just one finger first, okay.”

He sees Liam’s hand grip the comforter tighter, his knuckles white.  Zayn spares a second to kiss up the strong line of Liam’s inner thigh, which seems to relax him a bit, and then he presses his finger forward, hard enough that he feels the muscle of Liam’s hole give a little bit around the tip of his finger.

“Nngh,” Liam grits out, his leg jerking.

“It helps if you try to, like, push me out,” Zayn tells him, leaving his finger right where it is.

“Okay,” says Liam shakily.  Zayn pushes his finger in a bit more after he feels Liam unclench a bit, the soft give of his hole.  He inches in like that, stopping to let Liam adjust, until finally his entire finger is buried in Liam’s tight,  _tight_  arse.

“Fuck,” Zayn swears softly.  Liam’s gripping his finger so well, and he’s  _hot_  inside, too, slick and warm.  Zayn knows Liam’s not anywhere near ready to take Zayn’s cock up his arse, but he can’t help imagining how  _amazing_  Liam’s going to feel when they do get to that point.

“Zayn, Zayn – Zayn–” is all Liam seems to be able to say, he’s so flustered.  He’s whimpering, squirmy and blushing with a finger up his arse, and somehow he still manages to be  _cute._

“S’okay?” Zayn asks, needing confirmation.

“Um, yeah, it’s just – it’s so  _weird,”_  Liam stammers.

Zayn laughs.  “Good weird?”

“I think so.”

Zayn wonders if he should surprise Liam by informing him of the existence of his prostate now or if he should wait ‘til he’s two fingers in.  “Think you could take another, love?”

Liam’s still practically quivering.  “Not – maybe not just yet.”

Now it is, then.  Zayn grins, nodding, and kisses the tip of Liam’s cock again as he starts to crook his finger, moving it around inside Liam like he’s searching for something.  (Which he most definitely is.)

Liam makes a choked-off sort of moan, canting his hips up a bit toward Zayn’s mouth reflexively and squirming around on the bed.  Zayn presses his finger in as deep as he can, curling it upward and trying to hold Liam still so he can find –

 _“Ohmygod,”_  Liam groans, loudly, his whole body shaking.  “Oh my god, oh, fuck.”

Zayn is fairly sure he smiles as wickedly as an Azkaban prisoner when Liam reacts like that.  His finger is pressed right up against a tell-tale, firm little nub inside Liam’s body.  “That feel good, love?”

He rubs over Liam’s prostate before Liam can properly respond, and all that comes out of his boyfriend’s mouth is a strangled moan. 

“What – what – I don’t–”

“It’s your prostate,” Zayn informs him smugly, starting to press another finger teasingly against Liam.  “S’the best part of anal.”

 _“That’s_  my–?” Liam stammers, clearly confused and overwhelmed.  “Oh my  _god,_  Zayn, feels so good.”

“You want another?” Zayn asks, taking advantage of Liam in his responsive, amazed state.

“Yeah, oh – please.”

Zayn pushes his second finger in, and it’s still a tight fit but Liam seems to know what to do this time because it slides in much easier.  Liam’s thighs shake again and he lets out this deep, guttural groan that makes Zayn’s cock leak precome where it’s nestled in the sheets. 

“Oh my – fuck, why don’t blokes just – do this all the time,” Liam moans, sounding giddy and addicted.  “How does anyone –  _nngh –_ get any work done – after they’ve tried this?”

Zayn laughs, delighted.  This is going even better than he’d hoped.  “Proper slutty of you, Li.”

He expects Liam to laugh with him, but instead Liam tips his head back and makes that same low, wrecked sound as before.  _“Yeah.”_

The  _squelch_  of Zayn’s lube-covered fingers sliding in and out of Liam’s tight hole is loud in the room, the only sound other than Liam’s little whimpers and occasional gasps of Zayn’s name.  Zayn also might be breathing very heavily, but he can’t be sure because he can’t be arsed to pay attention to anything but Liam right now. 

“You look so hot,” Zayn murmurs, watching his fingers disappear over and over again, warm and shiny with lube.

Liam gasps his name again as his thigh shakes in Zayn’s hold, his entire body trembling as he starts to push back, impaling himself on Zayn’s fingers.  Zayn can’t hold back the moan he lets out when Liam’s eyes flutter open, their eyes meeting, and he sees how wrecked, confused and desperate Liam looks, how black his eyes are, so different from his usual warm brown.

“Can I – um – c’n I have–”

“Want another, babe?” Zayn asks, petting over his inner thigh.

“Yeah,” Liam replies at once, not bothering to be coy, just whining and begging for more.

“Course,” says Zayn, squeezing in a third finger alongside the other two.  It’s a bit more difficult to get in, and Liam sucks in a breath through his teeth, but eventually Liam’s hole relaxes enough that Zayn’s able to pump his three fingers in and out in a smooth glide.  He focuses on Liam’s prostate now, rubbing the pads of his fingers over it and keeping his fingers in deep.

“F- _fuck,”_  Liam swears shakily, twisting the comforter around in his grip. His eyes flutter closed again and he throws his head back, writhing around on Zayn’s bed and biting his lip.

He looks – he looks really, really beautiful, and Zayn is struck with that same protective, possessive feeling he was consumed by the first time he and Liam got each other off, that he doesn’t want anyone else to  _ever_  see Liam like this.  He’s too honest, too unguarded, and it’s all for Zayn, all Zayn ever wants to see.  He still can’t get over that he has his fingers up Liam’s arse, that part of him is  _inside_  Liam, and Liam – Liam must trust him so much, to let Zayn have him like this, and Zayn is so, so,  _so_  grateful for it. 

“I love you,” Zayn whispers, twisting his fingers inside Liam to get a different angle, one that makes Liam wail and kick his leg out.

“Oh my –  _fuck,_  ah, ah,” Liam grits out, precome beading at the head of his cock. 

Zayn leans down to lap it up, earning him another kick into empty air from Liam and an almost-sob of pleasure.  “I love you so much,” he says again, feeling like no matter how many times he says it, it’s never going to be enough.   _Never._

 _“Zayn,”_  Liam moans, sounding like he’s struggling to even get enough air in now that Zayn’s found his favorite angle and is relentlessly toying with his prostate.

Liam’s cock is twitching almost violently now, dark red and so hard, and Zayn leans down to take it into his mouth for real, now, wetting his lips before sinking his mouth down over the head and then taking as much in as he can.  Liam’s incoherent noises increase in pitch, then, and he starts thrashing around like he’s trying to buck Zayn off.

Zayn doesn’t let him, though, and Liam ends up thrusting up into Zayn’s mouth as Zayn keeps his fingers buried deep, making Liam swear through his teeth.  Zayn’s never heard Liam swear this much before, and it’s  _hot_  to hear. 

“Fuck,  _fuck,_  Zayn – close,” Liam pleads, and it makes Zayn moan around his cock, suck him harder and take him deeper as he increases the pace of his fingers, shallow little thrusts that ensure that most of Zayn’s fingers are inside Liam at all times.  Liam grunts low in his throat, lifting his hips up to meet the little thrusts of Zayn’s fingers as his moans increase in volume.

Zayn takes Liam as deep as he can, trying to relax his throat like he’s been practicing, and he feels Liam slide down, feels how warm and thick he is, and he keeps him there, swallowing around him and feeling Liam’s hole start to flutter around his fingers.  Liam’s close, there’s no doubt.

“Gonna – gonna–”

 _Yeah, come on, Li,_  Zayn urges in his head, wanting to taste Liam’s come on his tongue, and then the next second Liam is shouting, his thighs shaking as he comes, spurting hot and thick into Zayn’s throat and squeezing his hole so, so tight around Zayn’s fingers.  His orgasm lasts longer than it usually does, too, and Liam shudders through the aftershocks way more than he has any of the other times Zayn’s made him come.  Fuck.

“Oh my  _god,”_  Liam breathes out when he’s gotten his breath back.  “Holy shit.”

“Good?” asks Zayn unnecessarily, licking his lips.  He can’t help but be smug – Liam looks absolutely astonished and wrecked.

Liam laughs, breathless and hoarse.  “Obviously.”

Zayn licks up one last little bead of come from Liam’s slit, making Liam groan, and then he draws his fingers out slowly.  Liam makes a soft, sad little noise, like he doesn’t like being empty again, and Zayn is harder than he’s probably ever been in his  _life._

He hastily wipes his fingers on Liam’s thigh and then grabs for the lube bottle, wanting to slick up his palm and take himself in hand because it’s not going to take much at  _all_  to make him come.  Liam, though, clearly has other plans, because before Zayn can get the bottle open Liam’s asking, “Can I – do you want me to do you, too?”

Zayn freezes.  He thinks about how long it is since he’s had something inside him.  He glances at Liam’s hands, sees his long, thick fingers gripping the comforter, and he feels something twist in his lower belly, a hot curl of  _want_  flaring up.

“I don’t really – I don’t know how to do it, but I want to.  For you,” Liam continues.

Zayn’s cock twitches.

“I – okay,” Zayn replies shakily, suddenly feeling giddy and nervous, like this is his first time getting fingered as well as Liam’s.

Liam reaches up for him, loose and pliant after his orgasm.  Zayn bends down to kiss him, and it starts out sweet but turns dirty very fast from the way Zayn’s rutting his hips down against Liam’s abs.  Zayn almost comes when Liam uses his strength to flip them over so that he’s pinning Zayn to the bed.  He feels lightheaded, and Liam’s his whole world right now.

He has to close his eyes with a whimper when Liam starts kissing down his chest, pausing to suck on one of his nipples just to get a moan out of him before continuing.  Liam avoids his cock, which is probably smart, as much as Zayn hates to admit it, because his mouth and the things he can do with it are so sinful that Zayn wouldn’t last a minute.

Eyes still closed, Zayn hears the  _click_  of the lube bottle being opened.  He digs his nails into his own palms, sweaty and impatient.

“You want this as much as I do, right?” he hears Liam ask.

“Yeah, Merlin, just – do it, Li, c’mon.”

“Okay, so – just one first, right, and you know what to do so I don’t need to tell you–”

Zayn laughs.  It should be off-putting, how much Liam’s fumbling around, but instead it’s just a reminder of how  _innocent_  Liam is, which is both adorable and a huge turn-on.  “Yeah, m’alright.  Just – go slow, yeah?”

“Course.”

Zayn cracks one eye open to find a look of very intense concentration on Liam’s face.  Seconds later, he feels a finger, cool and slick with lube, press against him.  He quivers, willing his body to relax as Liam runs several fingers over his hole until the lube has warmed up and Zayn feels like he’s wet like a girl.   _Then,_  finally, Liam pushes one inside, going almost painfully slowly.

His finger is thicker than Zayn’s used to having inside him, so that even one finger is making him shudder. 

“Now, um,” Liam says carefully, “I want to – how do I find that spot?”

Zayn’s prostate hasn’t gotten any attention in months, which is making him almost cry with anticipation.  “You, um – just crook your fingers upward, a bit, and it should be – kind of hard, like different-feeling than the rest of me.”

“Okay,” says Liam, soft and determined.  He spreads Zayn’s legs a bit wider with his free hand and then Zayn feels Liam’s finger moving inside him, crooking upward and prodding at him.  He’s actually – his finger is so big that he’s actually pretty close to Zayn’s prostate already, and Zayn can feel his thighs shaking as he clutches at the comforter and tries to control his breathing. 

Suddenly, Liam manages to brush the pad of his finger across it, and Zayn’s back arches in bliss as he moans.

“Oh, god – s’that it?” asks Liam, his voice sounding deeper.

“Yeah, it’s – right there, Li, yeah,” Zayn confirms happily.  “I can take another.”

He hears Liam inhale sharply and then another finger is pressing into him, and Zayn bears down on it until it’s slid fully inside as well.  “Fuck, you’re so tight,” Liam whispers, like he has no control over the words spilling out of his mouth.

Before Zayn can respond, Liam finds his prostate again, this time massaging it with his two fingers, the pads of his fingers pushing into it over and over, and anything Zayn was about to say flies completely out of his head as an embarrassing whine slips from his mouth instead.

Zayn thought he was going to be able to handle this, to take it in stride, but as soon as Liam starts moving his fingers in and out Zayn realizes that, no, he’s not able to handle this – Liam pumping his fingers inside him, trying his hardest to get Zayn off, wanting to make sure he’s doing everything right.  He just about loses his words, and the only noises he makes for the next two minutes are little grunts and groans of pleasure.

When Liam pushes a third thick finger in, the little initial sting of pain that accompanies it is enough to clear Zayn’s head a bit.  Absurdly, his mind flashes back to the beginning of the school year, when he and Louis were fooling around on this very bed and he was whispering to Louis, “Bet his fingers are huge, fill you up so good, would bang you so hard with his fingers, I bet,” how they were getting themselves off thinking about  _Liam._   And now, five months later, here Zayn is getting fucked by the aforementioned fingers on the very same bed, and – yes,  _yes_  Liam’s fingers are huge.

Zayn laughs just thinking about how absurd this is.

“What’s funny?” asks Liam, who’s finally twisted his third finger in all the way alongside the other two.

“It’s – I just remembered that Louis and I got each other off once talking about your fingers and how –  _ah –_ how good they’d feel,” Zayn explains shakily, still feeling a bit too stretched from three fingers, “and now I’m living out my – fantasy.”

He expects Liam to laugh with him – it  _is_  funny, after all – but instead all Zayn is met with is silence.  He opens his eyes to see Liam frowning at him.  “Aw, Li, I didn’t–”

“I don’t–” Liam cuts him off – “I don’t wanna hear about stuff you and Louis did when I’m  _inside_  you, Zayn, Christ.  I didn’t used to be – jealous, but the more we do together the more jealous I get.”

Before Zayn can respond, he’s squeaking as Liam hauls him up with one arm, pulling his body off the bed and into Liam’s lap while he keeps his fingers inside him.  “I want to be better than them,” Liam whispers into his ear as he starts to move his fingers again.  “I know I’m not, yet, but I – I want to be the best you’ve ever had.”

“Oh, fuck,” Zayn gasps into Liam’s neck, clenching tight around Liam’s thrusting fingers as Liam finds his prostate again.  He feels weak, like Liam’s the only thing holding him up, and he winds his arms around Liam’s neck and holds on for dear life as Liam seems to realize that this is the perfect angle and really starts going at it.

“That good?” asks Liam lowly.

“Y-Yeah,” Zayn gets out, his cock flushed and twitching where it’s trapped in between their bodies.  He pants wetly into Liam’s skin as pleasure continually radiates out from his prostate and the three fingers stuffed inside his hole.

Liam’s other hand is digging into his back, holding him fast, and Zayn blushes at the wet sounds he can hear as Liam’s fingers fuck quickly in and out of him.  He feels – he feels like he might be getting close, but he knows that at some point either he or Liam’s going to need to get a hand around his cock in order for Zayn to come.  But Liam’s hands are very much occupied, and Zayn feels like if he lets go of Liam then he’s going to fall over, so he rides out the pleasure for now, his lust-drugged brain sluggishly trying to figure out a way for him to get a hand on himself.

“I wanna – god, I wanna make you come,” Liam whispers roughly.  He grips Zayn tighter and starts to move his fingers even faster, making Zayn tremble. 

Zayn wants to tell Liam to touch his cock, that that’ll make him come really quickly, but his words are completely gone, now – he feels so full, so pleasure-drunk as the attention Liam’s paying to his prostate ends up flowing white-hot through his every nerve.  All he can do is whimper Liam’s name over and over as Liam brings him continually closer to the edge.

The pleasure reaches a point where Zayn surely thinks he’s just going to pass out, so much pressure and heat built up in his cock with nowhere to go, and then something happens that Zayn wasn’t aware his body was capable of – he comes with his cock completely untouched, just with the barely-there friction of Liam’s stomach to press against.  Zayn cries out loudly in shock, his back arching, his cock spilling between their bodies as Liam fingers his orgasm right out of him.  Halfway through, Zayn’s body weakens and he collapses forward, his cock still twitching out come as he lets out a blissful, tortured moan and then bites at Liam’s neck to try and keep quiet.

When it’s finally over, Zayn isn’t even sure if he can move, and he just whimpers into Liam’s skin as Liam draws his fingers out and then carefully lays both of them down onto the bed, cuddled close to each other.

“Was that okay?” Liam asks shyly after Zayn’s stopped shaking against him.

Zayn laughs.  “Li, I’ve never – I’ve never come without someone touching my dick.  Except tonight.”

Liam’s face lights up, adorably elated.  “Really?”

“Really,” Zayn confirms.  “And I don’t want you to be jealous, okay?  I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you, and no one’s ever made me feel as good as you do.”

Liam makes a happy noise and leans forward to kiss him, and Zayn loses track of how long they lay there, snogging lazily, until they finally drag themselves up to clean off in the shower before getting in bed.

xxx

Zayn doesn’t realize he’s forgotten anything until the next day, when Hermione collects their homework at the end of Transfiguration class and Zayn realizes he’d completely forgotten to do it.

Head hung in shame, he comes up to Hermione after class is over and informs her of his mistake.

“Zayn!” Hermione huffs.  “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever forgotten to complete an assignment for me.”

“I know,” Zayn mumbles.  “I’m sorry, I just – I was up pretty late, um, researching Parselmouths, and it slipped my mind.  It won’t happen again.”

He doesn't mention the very nice distraction that Liam's fingers provided for the rest of the night, but he does blush at the memory.

“I know it won’t,” laughs Hermione.  “I can tell already.  Oh, and yes, Hagrid told me last night that your friend spoke Parseltongue during class.  I was shocked!”

“I think all of us were,” says Zayn.  “I was just – we were all pretty confused, because we thought he was Muggleborn for a long time, but – um – his dad passed away, so no one was ever able to confirm if he was a wizard or not, but I guess he was.”

“I’ll say,” Hermione says.  “It kind of makes you wonder about his ancestry.”

“It did, that’s why I was in the library trying to look up stuff about Parselmouths,” says Zayn.

“Oh, you won’t find anything about Louis’s family in the library, I’m sure, unless he’s part of one of the most famous – or should I say notorious – Parselmouth families.  Parselmouths are rare, but there have still been enough of them that they wouldn’t be able to fit neatly into a library book.”

“I figured it was worth a shot,” Zayn shrugs.

“It was good thinking,” Hermione agrees.  “Now, if Louis were to come into the Ministry and ask one of their historians to do some research in the archives, I think  _that_  might turn up some useful information.”

Zayn isn’t sure why he didn’t think of that.  Then again, he never imagined the Ministry had records on  _everyone,_  but he’s sure they’re in possession of a whole lot of information. “So I should let him know, then?”

“Yeah, it couldn’t hurt,” says Hermione.  “Now, I’m sorry, Zayn, but I have to Floo home and let the dog out before the next class period starts.”

“Oh, no, that’s fine,” says Zayn as Hermione shrugs on her coat.  “I’ll get you the essay tomorrow.”

“I know you will,” Hermione laughs, and with that, she strides quickly out of the classroom, her laughter still echoing after she leaves.

xxx

Zayn is so caught up with finishing his essay that he forgets to tell Louis at dinner that night.  He actually doesn’t tell Louis for a few days, mostly because Liam has suddenly become much more horny than usual, cornering him at all hours of the day and dropping to his knees, or whisking Zayn away after lunch and getting him off with his fingers inside him. 

Zayn isn’t one to complain about that at all, not when it has him walking around with a permanent dopey smile on his face and slightly weak knees.  He’s never had this much sex in his _life,_ not even when he, Louis, and Harry were still a thing. 

When he’s eating dinner with Louis at the Slytherin table on Friday night, though, Zayn finally remembers what Hermione told him.  Harry’s off eating with Ed at the Hufflepuff table, so it’s just Zayn and Louis.  Zayn looks around to make sure no one else is listening – he’s not sure how much everyone knows about Louis’s family situation – and then leans in, whispering to Louis what Hermione said he could do.

Louis tilts his head like he’s considering it.  “On one hand, I’d almost feel better not knowing,” he says.  “Who knows  _who_  my dad’s parents were, y’know?  They could’ve been some awful pureblood couple who bullied Muggleborns when they were in school.”

“Or they could be a perfectly nice, normal couple who happened to be descended from people who could talk to snakes,” Zayn reminds him.

“Perhaps,” Louis muses.  “Anyway, I’ll have to go there on Sunday, maybe, because Harry and I have a date tomorrow.”

“A date!” Zayn exclaims.  “An official date?”

“Yes, our very first official date,” Louis says.  He probably means it in a snarky sort of way, since Zayn’s been pestering him about this for months, but he just ends up looking stupidly fond, his mouth twisting into a smile.  Zayn sees him glance over his shoulder to find Harry, and when Harry sees that Louis is looking back at him, they both do this silly little sort of half wave.  It’s adorable.

“What’s got you all loved-up?  S’disgusting,” Zayn jokes.

He meant it as a joke, but Louis immediately responds with, “I topped him last night and it was wonderful.”

Zayn chokes on his pumpkin juice.  “ _Merlin,_ so much for taking it slow.”

“Hey, that  _is_  slow for us!” Louis protests.  “We hadn’t had sex foe  _weeks_  before last night.  Not even Stan walking in on us brought us down.”

Zayn rolls his eyes.  “You forgot to use  _Muffliato_  again?”

“Well, that, and the, um.  The curtains were open.”

“You didn’t close the curtains?” Zayn hisses, scandalized. 

“Yeah, we sort of forgot,” Louis admits sheepishly.

“Poor Stan.”

“Hey, he got a free show! Harry and I are hot,” huffs Louis.

“Not to a  _straight bloke,”_  Zayn admonishes him.  “Is that why he isn’t sitting with us?”

Stan had chosen to sit with Eleanor on the complete opposite end of the table.

“Yeah, he’s refused to speak to me all day,” says Louis.  “He’ll come around, though.  He always does.”

Zayn shakes his head.  “You’re ridiculous.”

Inside, though, he’s happy that Louis doesn’t seem to be very affected by all of the rumors about him that are swirling around the castle.  Zayn supposes that Louis must have developed a pretty thick skin over the years, what with people always bullying him for one reason or another, and that he’s probably gotten used to taking it all in stride.

“Not as ridiculous as you and Liam,” says Louis.  “Don’t think I haven’t noticed all the love bites he has.”

Hey, it’s not Zayn’s fault that Liam hasn’t wanted to cover them up.  His throat is littered with them.

“We’re not the ones who fuck in front of our roommates, though,” Zayn points out.

“Perrie would kill five men to see you guys fuck and you know it.”

“True.”

Zayn and Louis continue ribbing each other as they finish up their dinner, and Zayn is absolutely loving seeing his best friend this happy, so happy that not Andy Samuels’ rumors nor Tom Parker’s creepy, intense new Louis fixation can bring him down.  Life is good: Louis and Harry are back to going at it like rabbits, Stan is traumatized, and Zayn’s up to date on all of his schoolwork.  Everything’s back to normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~the calm before the storm~ ;)


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louis helps Draco out with a potion, the Hufflepuffs have a food fight, and Harry and Louis go on a date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is now officially my favorite chapter that I've written. I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Friday’s dinner is one of Louis’s favorites, chicken breast stuffed with mozzarella cheese wrapped in parma ham, with red velvet cake for dessert.  It’s actually what he had been planning on ordering for tomorrow’s date with Harry at Madam Puddifoot’s, but now in the interest of variety Louis probably has to reconsider.

After Louis and Zayn finish dinner and Zayn leaves to do some reading in the library (on a Friday night, no less – there must be something seriously wrong with him), Louis pops on over to the Hufflepuff table to sit down with Harry and Ed.  Some of the Hufflepuffs sitting around them actually visibly recoil when Louis sits down, which he finds  _hilarious._   Louis figures that the only way to deal with this Parseltongue business is to treat it as a joke, some freak accident of genetics, because there’s no  _way_  he’s a dark wizard.  Plus, he’s had lots of practice not giving a single fuck about what people think of him, so it actually hasn’t been bothering him too much.  In fact, he’s been having as much fun as he can with it, mumbling ominously under his breath when he passes gossiping Gryffindors in the halls, startling them and making them run away. It’s great fun.

“Hey, Lou,” says Harry, pressing a kiss to his cheek.  Louis beams.

“Alright, Louis?” Ed greets him.

“Yeah, you? Haven’t caught up with you in a while.”

“Same old, same old,” shrugs Ed.  “Had a bit of a thing with a Muggle girl back home over summer hols, so I was a bit cut up when I realized that we weren’t getting most of December off this year.  Plus, I couldn’t give her, like, an address to write to.  Y’know, a normal one, not one that ends in ‘Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.’”

Louis laughs.  “That does make it a bit difficult, yeah.  Can’t you go home for, like, a weekend or something?”

“I could,” says Ed, “but then there would be a lot of questions about where I go to school, how I got home so fast, y’know.  I guess a clean break’s just better.”

“Aww,” Louis coos sadly.

“I hear you had a nice last week of break,” Ed says to him, changing the subject with a waggle of his eyebrows.

Louis blushes.  “Yeah, it was – it was pretty great.”

“I was just telling Harry, but thank  _Christ_  you two got your shit together.  Was stressing me out, it was.”

“Ed’s more invested in my personal life than he is in his own,” Harry jokes, scraping the last bit of icing off of his plate and into his mouth with his fork.

“To be fair, you were like a soap opera for a bit,” says Ed.   _“My_  personal life is never that interesting.”

“Well, I think our goal is to be ‘happily boring,’ now,” Louis tells Ed, pinching Harry’s cheek.  “Guess you’ll have to find your entertainment somewhere else.”

“It’ll still be you, probably, Lou,” Ed says.  “Can’t believe I’m talking to the second coming of the Dark Lord.”

He catches Louis’s eye and all three of them burst into laughter, startling the Hufflepuffs eating near them and causing them to scoot even further away.

When Louis and Ed are done chatting and Harry’s licked his plate clean of the icing from the red velvet cake, the three of them get up and leave the Great Hall, Ed parting ways with them almost immediately to walk to the Hufflepuff common room behind the kitchens. 

Louis and Harry walk to the dungeons holding hands, then.  It’s something they’ve been doing for a little over two weeks, now, but it still makes Louis feel all floaty whenever they do it, kind of like he’s pricked himself with a Billywig stinger.

On the way, they pass a group of Ravenclaw first-years who visibly shudder as Louis approaches them, so Louis decides to fuck with them and makes a garbled hissing sound low in his throat.

“He’s doing it again!” one of them whispers in sheer fright, and Louis laughs as he passes them and hears them break into a run.

“Lou,” Harry whines, clearly trying not to laugh.

“Don’t act like it’s not funny,” Louis says, elbowing him in the side.

“I know, I know,” Harry concedes.  “I’ve been wondering, though, do you – when you did that, just now, were you actually speaking Parseltongue?”

“Nope,” says Louis.  “I can’t do it when I’m just speaking to, like, humans.  Zayn said he did some research and you’re really only supposed to be able to do it when you’re talking to snakes.  Like, when there’s a physical snake present.”

“Makes sense,” says Harry.  “I mean, you wouldn’t need to use it if a snake’s not there.  Unless you’re just trying to be creepy.”

Louis laughs.  “But I  _am,_ only because everyone is being so ridiculous lately.”

“They’ll come around,” Harry assures him.  “As soon as something else gossip-worthy comes along, everyone’ll forget.”

“I guess,” shrugs Louis.  He hopes that happens before the novelty of scaring people wears off, because some part of him, the part that isn’t having lots of fun with his newfound ability, doesn’t actually want this to continue for very long.

Harry gives his hand a squeeze as they come upon the entrance to the Slytherin common room.  Behind the familiar stone wall, Louis speaks that week’s password, “Galleon,” causing the passage leading to the common room to be revealed.

In the common room, about ten students are lounging around the green-tinted fire.  Among them is Tom Parker, who stands up happily upon seeing Louis and Harry, greeting them warmly and shaking Louis’s free hand.  Tom’s been almost creepily friendly to Louis since he discovered that Louis can speak Parseltongue, the obvious reason being that everyone now knows that Louis has a magical parent, one who could speak to snakes as well.

“Evening, lads!” Tom greets them.

“Hi,” Harry mumbles.  Louis has tolerated Tom’s friendly advances by viewing them as a really funny joke (he’s been treating his entire life as a joke, lately, everything except for Harry), but Harry still seems to be really upset at Tom’s complete, shallow change in behavior.  Harry’s tried to be cordial, though, at least when Louis is there.

“Hi, Tom,” Louis says.

“Got any plans for the weekend?” Tom asks excitedly, bouncing on his heels.  “Me and some of the other upperclassmen are planning on playing Exploding Snap tomorrow night, and Max’s dad sent him  _three_  bottles of Firewhiskey we can use! You want in?”

Louis has to bite his lip to keep from laughing.  “Actually, Harry and I have, um, we have a date tomorrow.  At Madam Puddifoot’s.”

“But tomorrow’s not a Hogsmeade day,” Tom says, confused.

“Well, y’know, secret passages and all that,” says Harry shortly.

Tom laughs anyway.  “You’ll have to show me sometime! Anyway, how about after?”

“Maybe after,” Louis concedes.  “What time did you make the reservations for again, Haz?”

“Six,” Harry tells him.

“Yeah, we’ll probably have some time, depending on when you start,” Louis tells Tom.

“Late, probably,” says Tom absently, looking at his nails.  “Anyway, yeah, sounds great.  Good to see you!”

He gives them a stupid little wave and walks back to his seat, plopping back into the armchair and starting to make little sparks come out of the end of his wand.

Louis only lets laughter escape once he and Harry are safely in their room.  “God, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Haz.”

Harry doesn’t laugh.  “He’s being a prick.”

“Yeah, but it’s  _hilarious,”_  Louis insists.  “He’s tripping over himself to be nice to me and make up for six-plus years of making me feel like dirt.  I’m expecting gifts, next.”

Harry does crack a smile at that.  “You’re having fun with this, aren’t you?”

“It’s the only way to deal with it,” Louis declares, flopping onto Harry’s bed and sighing happily at the feeling of finally being able to relax after a whole week of classes.  “Ugh, I always hate the first week back from break.  Reminds me that I’m at this school to do something besides shag you, and I hate it.”

Harry smirks, climbing onto the bed as well and spreading himself out possessively over Louis.  “What about your weekends, then, hmm? Think you can pencil me in?”

“Dunno,” Louis replies, grinning.  “Think I have to go to the library to do some work.”

He makes as if to get up, only to have Harry pin him back down, a glint in his eye.  Louis gasps happily and feels his cock start to swell.  “Not a chance,” Harry informs him, grinding down and pressing his own bulge against Louis’s.  “You’re mine for the weekend.”

Louis wants to keep up the banter but his mind has gone pleasantly blank, all thoughts not pertaining to Harry’s mouth and fingers and cock having flown clean out of his head.  All pretense abandoned, he nods breathlessly instead, pulling Harry’s head down to join their lips in a kiss.

xxx

Louis wakes up the next morning a bit earlier than he needs to, feeling relaxed and refreshed.  After Harry had gotten him off with a spectacular blowjob and Louis had returned the favor with his mouth around Harry’s cock and three of his fingers up Harry’s arse, they’d gone downstairs to the common room and spent the night chatting in front of the fire and playing cards with Stan and Eleanor.  Louis had been tired and had gone up to bed fairly early, before midnight, and Harry had evidently joined him some time later after Louis had fallen asleep.

Louis looks over at Harry, slumbering peacefully next to him, half on top of him.  He contemplates waking Harry up with a morning blowjob, but – it’s far too early, actually.  The only reason Louis needs to be up around this hour is because he and Draco have plans to work on the All-Purpose Antidote that’s been giving them trouble for months, and this is the only free time his professor has had this entire week.

Harry still might be sleeping when Louis gets back, actually.  Louis feels the corners of his mouth quirk up into a mischievous smirk as he gets out of bed and wanders into the bathroom to take a shower.

He showers and dresses leisurely, taking advantage of the fact that he’d woken up a bit earlier than he’d intended and, as such, has extra time to go through his morning routine.  Ten minutes til eleven, Louis makes the trip to the Potions dungeon.

“Morning, Louis,” Draco says when Louis enters.  His professor is already seated at the dark oak desk at the front of the room, a bubbling cauldron in front of him.

“Morning,” Louis greets him.  “How was your Friday?”

“It was alright,” says Draco.  “Astoria and I went to the theatre yesterday for the first time in ages, which was nice.”

“What did you see?”

“We saw Les Miserables, at one of the Muggle theatres, actually.  Hermione’s been telling me for _years_ how much better Muggle plays are than magical ones, and I didn’t realize how right she was.”

Louis snorts.  “Surprised?”

“Not – not for the reason you might think,” Draco admits.  “It’s just that wizards have access to so many special effects for their plays that Muggles can only dream of, but I think the Muggles have to make up for it by having more talented actors. The acting was phenomenal.”

“That makes sense,” Louis nods.

“How was your night?”

“Pretty good,” says Louis.  “Nothing remarkable.  Played some cards.”

“Is that a euphemism?” Draco asks, one blond eyebrow arched.

Louis snorts.  “No, no, I promise that’s _not_ what the kids are calling it these days.”

Draco laughs with him.  “Alright, alright, let’s get to work.  Now, where did we leave off last time we were working on this?”

“We were trying to figure out a way to add powdered graphorn horn and a crushed bezoar to the same potion,” Louis says. 

“Right, because they’re soluble in different mediums that don’t mix with one another,” Draco continues, evidently remembering what they had talked about. 

“I can’t see a way around it,” Louis says, frowning.  “But I feel like that’s what we need to add – if we crush up a bezoar and add it to the antidote that already cures every uncommon poison, that should – that should cover everything, yeah?”

“I think so,” says Draco.  “Were we also trying to figure out an alternative to Billywig stings?  We were talking about how your friend Zayn is allergic.”

“Oh, right,” Louis remembers.

“So, I’ve taken the liberty of brewing the first steps of the Antidote to Uncommon Poisons,” says Draco, gesturing to the bubbling cauldron.  “But I stopped at the step where you add the Billywig stings.  The powdered graphorn horn is already in there, and it’s water soluble, like we said.  So, what we need to figure out is how to make powdered bezoar soluble in water.”

It’s a problem that’s been plaguing Louis and Draco ever since they decided to try and tackle it.  Powdered bezoar’s chemistry is such that it doesn’t dissolve in water, forming thick clumps of chalky powder that make the potion impossible to brew.  What it  _does_  dissolve in is oil, which doesn’t mix with water and, again, makes it impossible to brew a potion.

Draco and Louis sit in silence for about a half hour, staring into space or into the hot, lively cauldron as they think, occasionally thumbing through old potions books and lists of ingredients and their properties.

Finally, Draco says, “Well, if we can’t  _replace_  the Billywig stings with something else, maybe we can add an ingredient that neutralizes the allergens that they contain?”

Louis frowns.  One problem at a time, he guesses.  “Well, what does Madam Pomfrey use in her antidote?”

“I… I don’t know, actually,” says Draco, frowning.  “Let me send her a Patronus to see if she’s in the castle.   _Expecto Patronum!”_

A sleek, silvery ferret erupts from the tip of his wand, scurrying around the room for a bit before finally stopping in front of Louis’s professor.  “Poppy, d’you happen to know the active ingredient for your Billywig antidote?  Cheers.”

The ferret scurries off, vanishing through the stone door at the entrance to the dungeon.

“Well, while we’re waiting for that, let’s tackle the more obvious problem,” Draco declares.  “How are we going to get the two powdered ingredients to dissolve in the same potion?”

Louis thinks, hard.  How do you get oil and water to mix?  They’ve never been able to do it in potions – as far as Louis knows, it’s always just been  _accepted_  among potion-makers that fat-soluble and water-soluble ingredients can never be used in the same potion.

Then again, Louis suddenly thinks after five minutes of brooding, famous and revered potion-makers haven’t always been the most practical of people, often overlooking simple solutions used by, say, Muggles.  Randomly, he remembers being seven years old, helping his mother clean up after dinner by washing the dishes and the big casserole pan.

Louis had stubbornly rinsed the casserole pan out with water several times, frowning as it failed to wash away the fatty residue from the macaroni and cheese his mum had made for dinner.  “Mum, it’s not working.  I think it’s broken,” he’d declared.

“You’ve got to use soap, darling,” his mum had corrected him, squeezing some dish soap into the pan and swishing it around with a sponge.  “It cuts the grease - itmakes it mix in with the water.  Otherwise it just keeps sitting there.”

“Soap,” Louis says out loud.

“Sorry?” Draco asks him.  It’s the first word either of them has said in about ten minutes.

“Soap,” Louis repeats.  “It’s what Muggles use to clean dishes.  And maybe wizards too, I dunno, but the point is that it can dissolve in water but it dissolves fat, too.”

“Hmm,” Draco muses.  “My house elves might use it, I really don’t know.  Is it – is it edible?”

Louis laughs.  “Not at all.  Although there might be an edible wizarding version.  You guys have got everything.”

“You, too,” says Draco.

“What?”

“You’re a wizard too.   _We’ve_  got everything.”

Louis smiles into his hand.

“Anyway, so – there’s some substance that lets fat mix with water, is what you’re saying.”

“Right,” says Louis.  “Is there – is there, like, a list of ingredients used in wizard cleaning solutions? We could compare it to common potions ingredients to see if any of them are edible.”

Draco smiles at him.  “Good thinking.”

From the dusty-looking bookshelf in the corner, his professor pulls out a slim volume, relatively new-looking, and returns to the desk.  Louis watches as Draco dusts off the cover, reading the title of the book:  _Household Uses for Many Common Potions and Their Ingredients._

They comb the book for a while, cross-checking with their own knowledge of potions taken by mouth, and after another forty minutes of deliberation, they come to the conclusion that dragon’s blood is the exact ingredient they need, the ingredient that will make powdered bezoar soluble in a water-based potion.

“Luckily I just received several new vials of it right before Christmas hols,” Draco says as they make their way over to the potions cabinet, “so it’s still very fresh.”

As they’re rummaging around in the potions cabinet, a floating silver hen comes clucking into the small space with them, filling the small, dingy cabinet with a brilliant glow.

“Just got in and got your message, Draco,” the hen speaks in Madam Pomfrey's voice, its cute little beak opening and closing, “and, if you’re still wondering, I use Glumbumble treacle to get rid of the giddiness and the floating.”

As the hen disappears, Draco makes a pleased little huff and reaches for a vial full of gross-looking little brown pellets.  “Excellent, really excellent.  Those are fat-soluble as well, but now that we’ve solved that problem, we should be good to go.”

Dragon’s blood and Glumbumble treacle in hand, they make their way back to the cauldron after Louis also grabs a bezoar and a mortar and pestle. He grinds up several Billywig stingers now that they know they have a way to neutralize their allergens, sprinkling the resulting contents into the potion and watching as it changes from pink to blue.

“Alright, do you think we should add the bezoar first, or the dragon’s blood?” asks Draco.

“Probably… probably the bezoar,” guesses Louis.  “That way we’ll be able to see the change when we add the blood and make sure it’s all dissolved.”

“Good thinking,” Draco says with a smile.

Louis beams.  He’s been trying to get back his confidence in potion-making ever since the Felix Felicis disaster, and this is really helping.

After he’s crushed the bezoar into a fine powder, Louis dumps it into the cauldron a little at a time.  As expected, it doesn’t mix in with the solution but instead congeals into gross-looking, chalky grey clumps that stand out disgustingly against the cloudy green potion.

“Yuck,” says Louis, making a face.

“Yeah, it does look a bit like dog sick,” agrees Draco.   _“But,_  we’re about to fix that, aren’t we?  Let’s add it a drop at a time so we’re able to write it down later.”

Louis feels giddy with excitement at the prospect of creating a brand new potion.  Maybe his name will even make it into the  _Daily Prophet._

He suggests this to Draco as his professor adds the dragon’s blood by painstaking single drops, keeping a close eye on the potion.  Draco laughs.  “That’s quite possible, but it’ll need to go through a couple rounds of testing by both the Ministry and the BPA before it’s deemed worthy of news.  People create new potions every day, it’s just that most of them are faulty or have terrible side effects.”

Louis pouts.  Hopefully this potion is one of the good ones.

After Draco has added exactly 29 drops of dragon’s blood, something happens.  The clumps of grey powder start to swirl around on the surface, separating from each other but still not dissolving.

Draco makes an excited noise in his throat that Louis immediately echoes, both of them watching the potion intently.

Another drop of dragon’s blood hits the surface of the potion with a small  _bloop,_  and the effect is almost instantaneous: the clumps of powder seem to be almost swallowed up by the cloudy green potion, skirting around on the surface for a few seconds before sinking.

Louis gasps.  “Was that it?”

“I think so,” says Draco.  “Let me just–”

He picks up a wooden spoon and begins to stir the potion around, both of them watching for any clumps.  There are none, and several times Draco even draws the spoon out of the potion so they can inspect small samples of it.  Nothing sticks out – the powdered bezoar has completely dissolved. 

‘Merlin, I thought we’d never figure it out,” says Draco happily.  “This is amazing.  This could – this could cure  _anything,_ I think.”

“Except for people allergic to Billywig stings,” Louis points out.

“Oh, right, the Glumbumble treacle,” Draco says.  “Here, let’s – two pieces should do it, I think.”

He adds one of the little brown pellets (Louis doesn’t even  _want_  to know what exactly they are) to the potion.  Nothing happens.  Once he adds another one, though, the potion fizzes a little and then turns a brighter shade of green.

“And that’ll be the allergens that’ve just gotten neutralized,” says Draco happily.

“So it’s – so it’s done?” asks Louis excitedly.

“For now it is.  We don’t know if the treacle is interacting poorly with any of the other ingredients, though, so we’ll need to get it tested.  Can you go get four of those small vials? The ones with the bright yellow stoppers?”

Louis has always wondered what the bright yellow stoppers were for.  Apparently, they’re for experimental potions not yet deemed safe for mass consumption.  He grabs four from the glassware shelf and then returns to the desk.

“Alright,” says Draco, who has meanwhile grabbed four sterile open-ended pipettes. He opens the first one and uses his wand to siphon up a measure of potion into it.  “One for the Ministry…”

He chucks the used pipette into a waste receptacle and grabs a new one, one for each vial.  “One for the BPA… one for St. Mungo’s, they’ll want to examine its transformative properties… and one for Madam Pomfrey, I’m sure she’ll want to examine it as well.”

Once the four little vials are full of bright green potion, Draco transfers the rest of the cauldron’s contents into a larger flask, which he stoppers with a larger bright yellow plug.

“Now, these need to be hand-delivered – you’re not supposed to accept experimental potions by owl or anything, just in case they’re volatile or dangerous – so I’ll stop by to deliver these three once we’re done here, but could you do me a huge favor and give this one to Madam Pomfrey?”

“Sure,” says Louis, accepting the proffered vial.  It’s slightly warm to the touch.  “So all we have left to do is label them, right?”

“And clean up,” Draco reminds him.  Louis groans; that’s his least favorite part.

After they’ve scrubbed out the cauldron and written their names, the date, and the proposed function of the potion onto all four of the little vials, they’re officially finished.

“Two hours of solid work,” says Draco, sitting back in his chair.  “I’m really, really glad I picked you as an apprentice.”

Louis can’t think of anything that could wipe the smile off his face.  “Thanks.”

“Yeah, anytime,” Draco says.  “Now, I promised Scorpius I’d take him to Diagon Alley this afternoon so he can try out their new beginners’ brooms, so I’ve got to run.  So, yeah, just get the potion to Madam Pomfrey, and have a good rest of your day, yeah?”

‘Definitely, yeah, I will.  Tell Scorpius I said hi,” says Louis as his professor shrugs on an expensive-looking peacoat.

“I’m not sure I will,” Draco jokes.  “I’m still bitter about you teaching him how to transfigure our cat when you came over that one time for the apprenticeship interview.”

Louis laughs at the memory, and then they part ways in the corridor with another round of goodbyes.

xxx

Louis figures he has just enough time to drop by the Hospital Wing before lunchtime.  Even though it’s a Saturday and there are always a fair number of students who choose to sleep straight through lunch, Louis is getting pretty hungry and he figures there will be at least a few of his friends there he can talk to. 

The corridors are fairly quiet as he makes his way to the infirmary.  Once there, he sees that the curtains are drawn around a few beds – there’s been a nasty case of the magical flu going around – and that Madam Pomfrey is nowhere in sight.

“Hello?” he calls.

There’s no response for a minute, and Louis is considering just turning around and leaving when a witch who looks to be in her mid-to-late thirties comes bustling out of Madam Pomfrey’s office.

“Hello, dear,” she greets him.  “How can I help you?”

“Um, is Madam Pomfrey here?” Louis asks, probably sounding rude even though he doesn’t mean to.

“She just left about five minutes ago,” says the witch.  “Poppy’s daughter called to tell her that one of _her_ kids has just come down with Dragon Pox, and she needed Poppy to come stay with the child until her shift is done at Flourish and Blotts.”

“So she won’t be in for a while, then?” asks Louis.

“I’m afraid not for several hours at least,” says the witch.  “Is there something I can help you with?  I’m her temporary replacement from St. Mungo’s.”

Louis figures that, since the potion is supposed to be hand-delivered, he probably should wait and give it to Madam Pomfrey himself.  “No, sorry I’ll – I’ll just come back tomorrow.  Thanks, though.”

He puts the vial of potion in the pocket of his khakis as he makes his way down to the Great Hall, thankful that it’s a weekend and that he doesn’t have to wear his stuffy robes and his Oxford with its uncomfortably-starched collar.

The Great Hall has a thinner crowd, as expected; Harry isn’t there, meaning that he must still be asleep, and Stan and Eleanor aren’t there either.  Zayn and Liam are nowhere to be found – but  _that’s_  not surprising, is it – so Louis makes his way over to the Hufflepuff table to sit with Niall, who’s chosen to sit with his friend Josh.

“Lads,” he greets him, sitting down across from Niall.

“Morning, Louis,” says Niall.  Josh gives Louis a smile.  “What’ve you been up to? Where’s Harry?”

“Still sleeping, probably,” says Louis, loading up his plate with fish and chips.  “I’ve been up for a while helping Draco – Professor Malfoy out with some potions stuff.”

“Oh, right, you’re his seventh-year apprentice,” Niall remembers.  “Did you discover anything new, or whatever it is you’re trying to do?”

Louis snorts.  “Yeah, we actually – we might’ve created, like, an all-purpose antidote to poisons.  Like,  _completely_  universal.”

Niall’s jaw drops open.  Josh’s mirrors him.  “But that’s wonderful!” exclaims Josh.

“Yeah, well, it still has to be tested,” says Louis humbly, basking in the praise.

“Remember the little people like me when you get famous and loaded, mate,” Niall says.

“Oh, stop it,” smiles Louis.  “I’m just a lowly apprentice.  What have you guys been up to all day?”

“Just woke up,” says Niall.  “I was almost too tired to come down to lunch, but then I remembered – I’m  _never_  too tired to turn down fish and chips.”

“And there’s chocolate cake for dessert,” says Josh.  “I saw them making it when I was leaving my common room.”

Louis’s mouth waters.

“Well, I’m glad I dragged my sorry arse out of bed, then,” says Niall.

“Late night?” asks Louis.

Niall frowns.  “Sort of.  I – Ellie and I sort of broke up last night.”

Louis’s face falls.  “Aw, Ni, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s alright,” says Niall.  “We weren’t really –  _together,_ like, after she left.  Like, it wasn’t official, but we would still talk over Floo and stuff and write to each other.  I just couldn’t do the distance thing, mate, I really couldn’t, and she was feeling the same way, so.”

“That still sucks,” says Louis sympathetically.  “I’m sorry, man.”

“Thanks,” says Niall.  “I’ll be alright, though.  I’m a free agent again.”

Josh snorts.

“We’ll see who’s laughing after I steal your girlfriend,” Niall tells him, bopping him on the head with a roll.

“Don’t even  _joke_  about that, you monster,” laughs Josh, pulling him into a headlock.

That’s probably how the food fight starts, but after a minute or so the entire Hufflepuff table has joined in, bits of fried fish and potato flying everywhere.  The whole table ends up being dismissed from the Great Hall by a disgruntled Headmistress McGonagall, and they slink out, tails between their legs but smiles on their faces.

(The whole lot of them sneak into the kitchens afterwards for slices of chocolate cake, though, so there’s no loss, really.)

xxx

After lunch, Louis makes his way back to the dungeons.  The Slytherin table had been the emptiest one; Slytherins really do love their sleep.

When he gets back to his dormitory, Louis is just in time to run into a towel-clad Harry coming out of the bathrooms.  “Hey, love.”

“Morning,” Harry says, running his hands through his wet hair.  “Why were you up so early?  Missed waking up with you.”

Louis’s heart does a stupid little flip in his chest.  “I had to get up and help Draco out with potions, remember?”

“Oh, right.”  The rest of their dormitory is unoccupied – Louis had passed Stan heading down to lunch as he was coming back, and who knows where Max and Tom are – so Harry has even less of a problem than he usually does stripping off his towel and using it to dry his hair, walking over to his trunk naked.  “Did you make any progress?”

“What?” asks Louis, too busy staring at Harry’s cute little bum to process what he’s saying.

Harry turns around, and Louis gets an eyeful of his cock instead, which isn’t helping his focus.  “I asked if you made any progress,” says Harry.

“Oh, um – yeah, we like, created a brand-new potion, but it’s whatever,” says Louis dismissively, still staring at Harry’s cock. It’s really a very pretty cock. 

Harry blushes under his gaze; Louis can see his chest flush.  “What kind of–”

“Doesn’t matter,” Louis interrupts him, advancing on him.  “I  _want_  you.”

Harry makes a pleased little noise but says, “I thought you wanted to wait until after our date.”

“Don’t be silly, I’m not that easy,” Louis says matter-of-factly.  He shrugs out of his shirt and continues, “I don’t fuck on the first date.”

“But how–”

“But I could be persuaded to fuck  _before_  the first date,” Louis finishes coyly.

Harry grins.  “Shouldn’t take much persuading, considering you’re looking at me like a piece of meat.”

A dozen terrible jokes pop into Louis’s head, which he ignores.  Other than that, he doesn’t have much of a retort ready, so he just drops his trousers instead. 

Harry gets on board, then, too.  “Christ, Lou, c’mere.”

They fall back onto their bed already snogging, Harry quickly flipping them over so that he has Louis underneath him pressed to the sheets.  Louis can feel Harry’s bare cock rubbing up against his own through his pants.

Harry’s moaning into his mouth already, and Louis has just enough sense to draw the curtains shut around the bed before he lets his sanity leave him.

He ruts up against Harry, making both of them gasp.  Harry’s wet hair falls into his face, making Louis splutter.

“Sorry,” says Harry, breaking away from him and pushing his hair back with a laugh.

Louis kisses his neck in reply, nuzzling into it softly before biting down and sucking a bruise into the skin.

“Fuck, Lou,” moans Harry.

“Want you so bad,” Louis whispers, kissing his neck again.  This wave of arousal had just hit him like a ton of bricks once he’d seen Harry’s naked body; he can’t even help but grind up again, seeking friction.

“Mmm.”  Harry bends down to suck his own love bite into Louis’s skin, just above his heart.  Louis gasps, his back arching.  “Love you so much,” Harry tells him after he’s detached his mouth, apparently satisfied with the dark red mark he’s left right next to Louis’s left nipple.

Louis whimpers, wishing there was a way he could get even closer to Harry than he already is, more than pressed tightly to each other, skin on skin.  What ends up coming out of his mouth is, “Fuck me.”

Harry freezes.  They stare into each other’s eyes; Harry’s are as wide as Louis’s feel.

“Are you sure?” Harry asks quietly, his tongue coming out to wet his lips.  His arms are starting to shake, probably from excitement and from the strain of holding himself up over Louis.

Louis nods, biting his lip.  The more he thinks about it, the more he wants it – he hasn’t had anything inside him in so  _long_  and he  _wants_  it, especially now that they both know what it means to each other, that they’re secure in the knowledge that neither of them is going to walk away afterward.  “I love you.”

Harry beams at him, bending down to claim his lips again.  He slips a thigh in between Louis’s own and Louis groans at the pressure against his cock, almost fully hard now. 

His hands find their way into Harry’s wet curls, tugging on them just a little until Harry’s hips jerk forward on their own accord.  Louis grins against Harry’s lips – he knows  _all_  of Harry’s delicious little sweet spots, and both he and Harry know it.

Harry also happens to know all of  _his,_ which is why Harry retaliates by pinching one of Louis’s nipples.  Louis gasps, breaking the kiss as his back arches again and he rubs against Harry’s bare thigh.

“Off,” Louis breathes.  “Need to – pants off.”

Harry sits up, hooks his fingers in the waistband of Louis’s briefs, and slides them down his legs.  Louis’s cock springs free, so hard already, and slaps against his belly.

“Well  _hello_ ,” smirks Harry, staring at Louis’s cock longingly.  Louis blushes.

Once Harry has completely removed Louis’s pants, he covers Louis’s body with his own again, slotting his thigh back in between Louis’s legs.  Louis drags his head back down, attacking Harry’s lips with his own and licking into his mouth hungrily.  Harry tastes like peppermint toothpaste and clean, freshly-showered boy.

When Harry sucks Louis’s lower lip into his mouth, Louis’s hips jolt up, his cock rubbing against the fine hairs on Harry’s upper thigh.  It feels so good that Louis does it again, and again, idly thinking to himself that sometime he’d like to lube up the insides of Harry’s thighs and fuck into the space between them.  He isn’t even sure if that’s a  _thing_  that people do, but he  _wants_ to.

Louis ruts up again, and before he knows it, he’s desperately humping Harry’s thigh as Harry laughs into his mouth.  He’s being an awful tease, and Louis wants to flip them over and shove harder against him until Harry falls apart, stops being smug.

“You’re so hot like this,” Harry whispers, staying very still as Louis’s cock slides against his skin.  Louis bites Harry’s lower lip and smiles when Harry hisses.  “Can’t wait til I’m inside you.”

Louis wants to roll his eyes in contempt, but they end up rolling back into his head in pleasure from Harry’s words.  He ruts his hips up a bit more forcefully, making a frustrated noise as Harry continues to stay teasingly still and drive Louis crazier and crazier.

“Just like that, yeah?” Harry murmurs, pinching Louis’s nipple.

“Shut  _up,”_  Louis hisses, his cock blurting precome onto Harry’s thigh and making him whimper as he continues to hump up.  “Shut up, you’re being – a giant –  _arse.”_

“Not as giant as your arse,” Harry jokes, nipping at Louis’s mouth again.

Louis makes another frustrated sound and uses his strong thighs and the element of surprise to flip them over, making Harry land on his back with an  _oomph_  as the air leaves his lungs.  “You’re  _so annoying,”_  he tells Harry, leaning down and biting at one of his nipples.  Finally,  _finally_  he has Harry underneath him, and now  _Louis_  is calling the shots and Harry can’t do anything about it.

“Sorry,” says Harry, grinning.  He doesn’t look sorry at all.  Louis fits his teeth around Harry’s nipple and sucks on it, and that  _finally_  gets a response, makes Harry gasp and jerk under his touch.  “Lou–”

“Shh,” Louis shushes him, sucking a love bite over Harry’s heart to match the one Harry just gave him.  He shifts his thighs so that Harry’s hard cock fits into the cleft of his arse, sighing happily and rocking down.

“Oh god,” Harry whines, rutting up and meeting the grind of Louis’s hips.  “Oh – nngh – wanna fuck you so bad.”

“Want you to,” Louis whispers, stealing another kiss as Harry’s hands come up to spread Louis’s arse cheeks apart, letting his cock fit in between them more snugly and perfectly.  Louis’s blood is pulsing with adrenaline, with the anticipation of getting Harry’s big cock inside him after what feels like years without it.  His heart feels whole again, the last of his inhibitions gone, that last barrier of trust between him and Harry stripped away as Harry kisses him sweetly and holds him like he’s the most special thing in the world.

“Where’s your wand?” Louis asks Harry, kissing the corner of his mouth.  He can’t remember the last time he went and physically got lube from his trunk; they’ve always been too into it to be bothered getting up, or too unclothed if their roommates are in the room.

In response, Harry reaches one arm up and under his pillow, extracting his wand after a few seconds.  His eyes close as he holds it and, a second later, Louis hears a trunk fly open and their bottle of lube bursts through the curtains. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he hears Stan say.  How long has Stan been in the room? He must have just gotten here.  _“Sonus Arresto.”_

That must be that new spell that Zayn taught him.  Whatever; Louis can’t always be bothered to cast  _Muffliato_  in the heat of the moment.  He might’ve felt guilty about it before, but now that a spell like  _Sonus Arresto_  exists he feels perfectly justified in not casting it.

Louis and Harry both giggle wildly as they resume kissing, running their hands all over each other.  “Wanna ride you,” Louis murmurs, grinding down again and feeling the wet tip of Harry’s cock slide slickly between his arse cheeks.

Harry groans, squeezing Louis’s bum as his hips jerk up.  “Yeah, Lou, please.”  Louis hears the  _snick_  of the lube bottle as Harry opens it and shivers in anticipation.

“Go, um,” he says hesitantly, “go slow, yeah?”

“Course,” says Harry, kissing him again slowly as he brings a single slick finger up to rub at Louis’s hole.  Louis wills himself to relax into it, tensing up a little at first but then consciously relaxing his muscles.

Louis gasps as Harry pushes his finger in, feeling it slide hot and knowing inside him.  He buries his face in the soft, smooth skin where Harry’s neck meets his shoulder and whimpers.

“Okay?” Harry asks quietly, not moving his finger once it’s fully inside.

“Mhmm,” Louis nods, pushing back on it just enough to let Harry know he wants more.

“You’re so tight,” Harry murmurs, and it’s something he’s said countless times before but it’s – it’s with an air of something like  _wonder,_  this time, like he’s in awe of Louis’s body, and it makes Louis want to kiss him all over.  Harry fucks his finger in and out until Louis is groaning, arching his back and pleading for another.

Harry gives it to him, sliding another wet finger in alongside the first one, making Louis feel full and shivery all over.  He thrusts back again, whimpering and biting at Harry’s shoulder, and it happens to be at the perfect angle to make Harry’s fingers nudge into his prostate.

It’s a paralyzing type of pleasure that Louis hasn’t felt in over a month, and he moans loudly into Harry’s sweet-smelling skin as the feeling travels up his spine and makes his head spin.  “Yeah, like that, oh – oh my god–”

“Oh, fuck, I missed this,” breathes Harry, fucking his fingers in quickly now that he’s found Louis’s prostate.  Louis almost feels like Harry is reacquainting himself with Louis’s arse, like catching up with an old friend, and he  _would_  laugh if he wasn’t shivering all over from his nerves short-circuiting.

Louis tells Harry once he’s ready for a third finger, and he feels so stretched and full from three fingers that he wonders out loud how Harry’s cock is going to possibly fit inside him.

“It’ll fit,” Harry says roughly, a smile evident in his deep voice.  “We fit together, Lou.”

Louis smiles into Harry’s skin, feeling his hole clench tightly around Harry’s fingers as Harry prods at his sweet spot again and again.  It feels so _good_ , and Louis is so happy he feels like he might burst.

It’s when Harry’s fingers stop feeling like they might split him in two that Louis knows he’s ready.  “Ready, babe,” he murmurs into Harry’s ear, nipping at the lobe and making Harry shudder.

When he pulls back and lifts off a bit to let Harry slick his cock up with lube, their eyes meet and Louis can’t stop a wide, stupid smile from spreading across his face at how giddy Harry looks.  Harry’s smile mirrors his own. 

Louis relaxes back down, then, and feels the wet head of Harry’s cock nudge against his stretched hole, and suddenly he can’t stand another _second_  of not having Harry inside him.  He lowers himself down slowly, watching Harry’s face and trying to keep his own features steady as he feels himself open up to take in Harry’s cock.

Harry’s biting his lip and staring up at him with wide eyes, and Louis has to close his eyes and bite his own lip as he feels the thick tip slip inside him, feeling bigger than it’s ever felt.

“Fuck,” Harry whispers, so quietly Louis isn’t sure if he imagined it.  Eyes still closed, Louis feels Harry’s hand come up to rub at his belly.

Louis’s mouth drops open as he sinks further down, having to actually stop at one point to catch his breath and let himself adjust.  Soon, though, he becomes impatient with himself and lowers the rest of the way down until he can feel Harry’s balls pushed up against his arse.

Louis tries to speak, but all that comes out is a whimper.  He opens his eyes to look at Harry, whose chest is rising and falling quickly as he tries to stay still.

“Harry,” he gets out, his voice cracking on the second syllable.

Harry smiles at him, clearly overwhelmed.  He reaches for Louis’s hand and takes it in his own, squeezing it tightly.

Louis starts to move when he feels comfortable, feeling the smooth drag of Harry’s cock inside him as he lifts himself up and down.  He leans down to kiss Harry, partly to muffle the loud moans that have started to slip from his mouth without his control, but also to change the angle, and –  _fuck,_  it’s just like Louis remembered, it’s  _better_  than Louis remembered as Harry’s cock bumps right up against his prostate and slides over it again and again.

“Right there?” Harry asks.  Louis realizes that he’d broken off from Harry’s mouth to cry out in pleasure.

“Yeah, yeah, there,” Louis says, moving his hips faster as Harry starts to move his as well.

“Fuck,” gasps Harry, gripping Louis’s hip tightly with his other hand, “fuck, you feel so good.”

Louis leans back up a bit to get more leverage to move, trying to keep the angle the same, and he cries out loudly when Harry’s cock jabs forcefully into his prostate.  His thighs are shaking from exertion now, his body becoming weaker and weaker from pleasure as Harry continues to fuck up into him.

“M’already – close,” Harry grits out, thrusting up even faster.  “Been – so long –  _fuck.”_

His hand leaves Louis’s hip and instead fits its way in between their bodies to take hold of Louis’s cock.  Louis’s hips jerk uncontrollably and he almost shouts as Harry’s fingers go straight for the head of his cock and start to rub lightly over the slit.  Harry’s – fuck – Harry’s not messing about, _fuck._

Every time Louis pushes back, he takes Harry’s cock fully inside, and every time he lifts off, his cock glides slickly through the tight circle Harry’s made with his fingers.  He lets out a desperate wail and squeezes his eyes shut, moving faster and faster and chasing his orgasm. 

“M’gonna come,” Louis whines after a couple more minutes, the wet sounds of Harry’s cock bottoming out inside him making his head spin. 

“Yeah?” Harry grins.

“Yeah –  _yeah,_ Harry, shit–” Louis cuts off, almost collapsing as he comes _hard_ over Harry’s fingers, whining loudly as Harry’s cock presses against his prostate and coaxes another spurt of come out of him. 

Harry groans low in his throat as Louis clenches tightly around him, making the drag of his cock even more intense, and then he’s pulling Louis’s mouth to his and biting at Louis’s lips as his hips jerk wildly.  Louis  _feels_  it when Harry comes inside him, feels warm and wet and full as he sucks on Harry’s tongue.

They lay like that for a while, Louis draped limply over Harry with Harry’s cock still inside him as they kiss unhurriedly.  Louis is still buzzing from how good that was, and he doesn’t know how to properly convey how fucking  _happy_  he is, so he just keeps kissing Harry.  He thinks he could kiss Harry forever, probably.

“I love you,” Harry murmurs finally, breaking the kiss to lift Louis up slightly so he can ease himself out.  Louis whines when he feels some of Harry’s come drip out of him, and Harry makes a low noise in his throat as his fingers dip inside, trying to keep his come in.

“Love you too,” says Louis happily, squeaking a little bit as Harry’s fingers play at his hole.  “Ugh, now I have to shower again, though.”

“So do I,” Harry points out, his hair still wet from his previous shower and now from sweat, too.  “We can shower together.”

“I like the way you think,” Louis informs him, kissing him on the nose. 

xxx

After they’ve showered again and dried their hair quickly using magic, Louis and Harry take a nap together, stretched out warm and naked under the covers.  They wake up a bit later than Louis would’ve liked, though, meaning that they have to rush a little bit to get ready for their date.

“What are you wearing?” Louis asks Harry.  A quick peek out of the curtains tells him that their dormitory is once again empty, so he climbs out of bed naked and pads over to his dresser to get a clean pair of briefs.

“Probably my black jeans and a nice sweater,” says Harry.  “You’re s’posed to dress kinda nice, I think.”

“Should I wear corduroys or my khakis?” asks Louis, selecting a pale blue cable-knit sweater and pulling on a white t-shirt to wear underneath.

“Definitely khakis,” Harry suggests.  “They make your arse look amazing.”

“Not that it doesn’t always look amazing,” Louis huffs, pulling on the same pair of khakis he’d been wearing earlier.

“Obviously,” laughs Harry.  Louis looks over to see that Harry’s gone with a forest green waffle-knit long sleeve shirt that fits him really,  _really_ well.  He’s also wearing his customary black jeans and a pair of dark brown boots.

“Dressy enough, I guess,” sniffs Louis haughtily, pulling his sweater over his head.

“I’m perfectly dressy!” protests Harry.  “How nice do they expect a couple of teenage wizards to get, anyway?  I’m not wearing my bloody dress robes.”

Louis laughs.  “It’s alright, I’m classy enough for the both of us.”  He twirls around to let Harry admire his outfit.

“You look really nice,” says Harry.

Louis blushes.  “So do you.”

Harry beams at him.  “Sorry, I’m just – I’m really excited for this.”

Louis feels that same uncontrollable happiness bubble up into his throat.  “Me too.  We’re gonna be  _late_  if we don’t get moving, though. Let’s go.”

“We can just go to the Three Broomsticks if they give our table away,” Harry suggests jokingly after they’ve bundled themselves up in coats and hats and scarves to brave the cold.

“Harry, we are not going to a  _pub_  for our first date,” says Louis, knocking their shoulders together as they walk down the stairs to their common room.  “Tom  _knows_  us, too, Christ, he’d be teasing us all night.”

xxx

Louis and Harry successfully it through the secret underground passage to Honeyduke’s and pass out of the storage cellar undetected.  It’s snowing in the tiny village of Hogsmeade, just a flurry, but enough that it sticks in Harry’s unruly curls and Louis has to brush a light dusting of it off once they get inside Madam Puddifoot’s.

“You should’ve worn a hat like I did,” Louis tells him, batting at his hair with more force than is strictly necessary.  Harry just grins at him and leans down to kiss him right there in front of the door, making Louis blush happily.

The hostess clears her throat, making them jump apart.  “Can I help you?” She’s smiling at them, though, so Louis guesses that they’re probably pretty cute. 

“Yeah, we have a reservation at six for Tomlinson,” Louis tells her.

She browses through some papers before her finger seems to find a name.  “For two?”

They nod.

“Alright,” she says, grabbing two menus and a wine list, “if you could just follow me, we have your table ready for you.”

Their table is near the large fireplace set up in the center of the room, casting a warm glow over the diners.  The tables on either side of theirs already have couples at them, and it’s only after Louis and Harry have been seated that Louis realizes that Professor Weasley is sitting at the table right next to theirs with a red-haired man who can only be her husband, Ron Weasley.

His first instinct is to be starstruck – he forgets, sometimes, how famous Hermione Weasley is because of the fact that he sees her almost every day, but he’s only ever read stories about Ron, and he’s  _right there._   Louis is about to subtly alert Harry when he remembers something even more pressing – that Hermione is their  _professor_  and this weekend is  _not a Hogsmeade weekend._

Before he can think of anything to say, Hermione recognizes them.  “Louis? Harry?”

Harry seems as speechless as Louis feels.  “Hi, Professor,” Louis croaks out eventually. 

“How are you?” Hermione asks warmly.  Then, her face changes, and she says, “Wait, it’s not a Hogsmeade weekend, is it?”

Louis and Harry don’t respond.  Ron Weasley bursts out laughing.  “Ron,” Hermione admonishes.

“They look like they’ve seen a Dementor,” Ron says, still laughing.  “Are these students of yours?”

“Yeah, they’re in their seventh year,” says Hermione.  “Louis, Harry, this is my husband Ron.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Weasley,” says Harry.

“Merlin’s beard, don’t call me that,” Ron says, looking aghast.  “Mr. Weasley’s m’dad.”

“Sorry,” Harry says sheepishly.

“It’s quite alright,” says Ron, shaking both of their hands in turn.  “Judging by the fact that Hogsmeade  _wasn’t_  overrun with schoolchildren, though, I’m guessing it’s not a Hogsmeade weekend.”

“Maybe,” Louis hedges.

“How did you–” Hermione starts.

“You don’t happen to possess a very special map of the school, do you?  One that shows you secret passages out of the castle?” asks Ron, looking excited.

“That one from – who was it, Moony, Padtail, something-or-other?” asks Louis.

“That’s the one!” exclaims Ron excitedly.  “’Mione, it hasn’t been lost, how amazing is that? Students are still using it!”

Hermione frowns.  “I technically should confiscate it, shouldn’t I.”

“Come off it,” Ron says, waving his arms.  He turns to Louis and Harry.  “When we were in school, we used it a  _ton.”_

“That same map?” asks Harry, amazed.

“The very same,” mumbles Hermione, her head in her hands.  “You’re right, of course I’m not going to confiscate it, just – don’t let any of the other professors know you have it.  They’ve been thinking that it’s gone for years, and it’s best that it stays that way.”

Louis can see why; it’s a very valuable tool for mischief and spying.  “You can do whatever you want as long as you don’t tell McGonagall you saw us here, Professor.”

Ron roars with laughter just as a waitress comes over to greet Harry and Louis and take their orders.  They haven’t even opened their menus, yet, though, so they just order a bottle of the house red wine to start.

“We’ll leave you alone so you can decide what you want,” Hermione says, turning back in her chair to face her husband.

“Great meeting you,” Ron tells them.  “Glad someone still has that map, honestly.”

Louis is still a bit starstruck as he peruses the menu, wondering if it would be impolite to ask for a picture before Ron goes.  It probably would.

Louis ends up ordering three little medallions of filet mignon wrapped in bacon with a side of parmesan risotto; Harry goes for a roasted half-chicken with fingerling potatoes and seasonal vegetables.  Louis feels very classy, especially once the wine comes and they’ve each had a glass.

He’d spent the entire week worrying, actually, that this date was going to be awkward – they’ve been best friends for seven years, now, but this is the first date they’ve ever gone on.  At least, this is the first meal they’ve had by themselves that they had explicitly labeled as a date beforehand, and Louis had been afraid that the label itself would make the conversation stilted and forced.

It isn’t, though; conversation flows as naturally between them as it always has, and the food is delicious, and – everything’s just so  _good,_  the atmosphere and the wine and the lovely, lovely boy sitting across from him.  Louis and Harry start playing footsie under the table halfway through eating their entrees, and it just makes them laugh more, turning into a game of who can act the most normal and keep the chatter going while they’re having their feet tickled.

The time flies by.  Before Louis knows it, the waitress is removing their empty plates and asking them if they’d like any coffee or dessert.

“No thank you,” says Harry politely.  “I’m full.”

“Actually, I’d like – do you have cappuccino?” asks Louis.  His favorite part about drinks is the foam on top – that’s why he likes cappuccinos, and why he orders his butterbeer with extra foam every single time. 

“We certainly do,” says the waitress.  “You’re sure you wouldn’t like to see a dessert tray?”

Louis glances over at Harry.  “I guess we can,” says Harry.  Louis smiles.

“As long as they have something small,” Harry tells him.  Next to them, Ron and Hermione are just finishing up paying their bill.  “I’m stuffed.”

“As long as they have something fried and covered in chocolate,” says Louis.

“Ugh,” Harry moans.  “That would just put me over the edge, honestly.”

Ron and Hermione are just pulling their coats on when a man comes over to Louis and Harry’s table.  “Here’s your coffee,” he says gruffly, putting a mug down in front of Louis and then walking away.

Louis frowns.  It’s just regular coffee, not cappuccino.  “Actually, I ordered–”

The man has disappeared back into the kitchens, though.  Louis huffs.

“Oh my god, Lou, you’re so picky,” Harry groans, reaching across the table and plucking up the cup of coffee.  “If you’re not gonna drink this, I will.”

“Go ahead,” says Louis stubbornly, still looking around for their waitress.  “I’m waiting for my foam.”

Harry rolls his eyes and sips at the coffee, smacking his lips after he’s swallowed.

“Well, again, it was nice meeting you,” says Ron Weasley.  He and Hermione have stood up. “Hopefully we’ll–”

He’s cut off, though, by Harry giving a choked-off hiccup and collapsing against the table, dropping the cup of coffee onto the floor, where it shatters.

The chatter in the restaurant dies down at the noise, and Louis’s stomach plummets into his toes when Harry doesn’t get right back up.  “Harry?”

Harry doesn’t respond, but he starts to – spasm, almost, his muscles jerking randomly until he slumps out of his chair and onto the floor.

“Harry?” Louis asks again, getting up out of his chair as panic colors his voice.  “Harry? Harry! Oh my god–”

He kneels down beside Harry, whose eyes have rolled back in his head as his body continues to shake.  His face is an ashen grey, the color rapidly draining further as the seconds pass.

“Help, help, somebody – help, please–” Louis cries, trying to hold Harry close and get him to stop shaking.

“He’s been poisoned,” he hears Hermione gasp behind him.  “He’s been - Ron, I don’t have anything–”

“Somebody, help, please help!” Louis screams, feeling sick as Harry starts to foam at the mouth. 

He’s vaguely aware of Ron bellowing out “Stop him!” and running off, but his vision is starting to condense into a tunnel, blurring black at the edges as Hermione kneels down beside him, taking out her wand and murmuring spells frantically, but they  _don’t work,_  of course they don’t, Harry’s been – Harry’s been  _poisoned,_  and Hermione doesn’t  _have anything_  to stop it, they’d need some kind of  _antidote_  that they don’t  _have_ and Harry’s been  _poisoned_  –

Even as Louis feels his body start to go into shock, his brain feels electric as he remembers that he’s wearing the same khakis that he’d worn when Draco had given him the small vial of universal antidote.  He fumbles around, his clammy hands catching on his sweater and the fabric of his trousers before he finally shoves his hand into his pocket and pulls out the vial with the electric yellow stopper.  It hasn’t been tested yet, but –

Louis looks at Harry, looks down at his boyfriend who doesn’t even look  _alive_  anymore, who Louis wouldn’t even  _know_  was alive if he wasn’t shaking wildly and gurgling at the mouth, and knows that he  _has to try._

He uncaps the little vial and pries Harry’s mouth open, and someone starts screaming – but – that’s  _Louis_  screaming, screaming at how cold Harry’s skin has already gotten, and his hands are quivering so badly but he manages to tip the potion into Harry’s open mouth. 

There are a few terrible seconds during which Louis isn’t sure if the potion worked, isn’t sure if Harry’s – going to make it, and someone –  _Louis_  is still screaming, maybe, he isn’t sure, he can barely see anymore, he feels like he’s going to throw up –

And then Harry’s body stops shaking, going lax against the floor, and there’s one more  _horrible_ second where Louis thinks no, it didn’t work, Harry didn’t  _make it_ , but then Hermione ducks down to hold her ear near Harry’s mouth and says, “He’s breathing, he’s breathing, he’s okay,” and then all of the adrenaline coursing through Louis’s bloodstream seems to solidify at once, and his world goes black.

xxx

Louis wakes up in an unfamiliar room full of calming neutral colors that smells like antiseptic.  He blinks his eyes open blearily and, for a few seconds, wonders stupidly where he is.  He tries to think of what the last thing he remembers is, and then when he does, he starts screaming bloody murder.

A woman – she must be a Healer, he must be in St. Mungo’s – dressed in an all-white uniform comes rushing into the room holding a basin. 

“Where’s Harry?” Louis asks her, trying to get out of bed.

“Harry’s – no, love, you have to stay still–”

_“Where’s Harry?”_

“He’s in the room next to yours, love.  He’s fine.  He’s still asleep, but he’s okay.”

Louis shivers, feeling like he might’ve cheated death itself.  His brain pauses on an unpleasant thought, that if he  _hadn’t_ chosen that day to meet with Draco or he  _hadn’t_ wracked his brains hard enough to come up with a way to dissolve powdered bezoar in a water-based solution or Madam Pomfrey  _had_  been available to take the potion from him or Harry had suggested that he wear his  _corduroys_  instead of his khakis –

“I’m gonna be sick,” Louis gasps out.

The Healer holds out the basin she’d brought in, pulling his sweaty fringe back from his face as he heaves up the entirety of his dinner into the basin and then some, dry-heaving for minutes afterward every time he thinks about what  _could have happened._

Nothing else is wrong with Louis, though, so as soon as the Healer has checked his vitals and given him a toothbrush and toothpaste with which to brush his teeth, she gives him the go-ahead to go into Harry’s room.  Louis has never run faster in his  _life._

Hermione is already in there, talking quietly with a Healer next to Harry’s bed, and –  _Harry._

He’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay, Louis thinks, darting to Harry’s bedside and taking one of Harry’s hand in both of his own.  Harry’s chest is softly rising and falling, and his skin doesn’t look gray anymore, and his face has been cleaned off – he’s  _alive._

Louis starts crying, then, as someone pushes a chair behind him so he can sit down next to Harry, holding Harry’s warm hand tightly and sobbing.  The Healer and Hermione both leave the room, then, and Louis starts babbling, telling Harry silly things like how sorry he is in between great sobs and sniffles.

After about five minutes, one of Harry’s eyes cracks open.  Louis gasps.  “Harry?”

“Lou,” Harry croaks.  “Where am I?”

“You’re in St. Mungo’s,” Louis tells him, his eyes still dripping with tears.  “You’re alright, love, you’re alright.”

“Love you,” Harry sighs, his mouth quirking up into a smile, and then he passes out again, like just that exchange had cost him a lot of energy.  Louis starts crying again with relief, thanking whatever higher power exists that he still has his Harry.

For all the crying and praying he does, though, it’s not until half an hour later that the most obvious question crosses his mind and makes his blood run cold:

_Why was there poison in the coffee?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry not sorry for the cliffhanger ;)
> 
> Rant to me about it on [tumblr](http://povverbottoms.tumblr.com)!!!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louis and Harry meet _another_ Harry, Louis meets a long-lost relative, and an interrogation proves unpleasantly fruitful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of stuff is revealed in this chapter. One big note: this chapter contains implied off-screen rape and discussions of sexual assault, so if that's triggering for you, please message me off anon on Tumblr or in the comments here and I will fill you in on the important details of this chapter without you having to read it.
> 
> This is also the longest chapter yet, at 16k! Wow. It was a lot of fun to write, and I hope you like it :)

_Why was there poison in the coffee?_

Shit. Louis hadn’t even  _thought_  of that until now. That coffee was -  _Louis himself_ had ordered it (well, he’d ordered cappuccino, at least), it was meant for  _him._

Why had somebody tried to poison him?

He thinks of little else for the next half-hour, turning the question over time and time again in his mind as he absentmindedly strokes Harry’s warm hand, cupping it between his own.  The Healer comes in several times to scan Harry with her wand, making Harry’s body flash different colors in different places, and then nods and writes things down on a clipboard. Louis pays her barely any attention, instead focusing on the distinct rise and fall of Harry’s chest as he tries to puzzle out why on  _earth_  somebody would want him dead.

When the Healer comes in to change Harry’s IV bag (finally, a piece of hospital equipment that Louis actually recognizes), Louis speaks up. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

“Yes, dear?” the Healer asks, unhooking the empty fluids bag and hanging the new one up in its place.

“Do you - you don’t happen to know where Hermione is, do you? The woman who brought me and Harry here?”

“She’s just outside,” says the Healer, flicking the IV line to get an air bubble out, “and she’s been talking with Mr. Potter for about fifteen minutes now. Would you like to speak with her?”

“Yes, please,” says Louis, still feeling faint at the fact that somebody tried to kill him.

The Healer leaves the room, taking the empty IV bag with her, and then about a minute later the door opens again and Hermione comes in. Right behind her is -

Louis very nearly says  _oh my god_  out loud _._

It’s Harry Potter.

Only  _then_  does it register in Louis’s mind that the Healer had said “Mr. Potter,” that standing right before him is arguably the greatest wizarding hero of all time. This bloke is the stuff of  _legends,_ the subject of too many biographies to count and the most popular subject of paparazzi pics for the  _Daily Prophet_  even today.

“Hi, Louis,” says Hermione brightly. “I’d like you to meet Harry. Different Harry than your Harry, actually-”

“Harry Potter,” says Louis in a quiet voice.

“That’s the one!” says Hermione.

Harry Potter laughs. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says, extending a hand. “Louis, right?”

“That’s me,” agrees Louis, shaking his hand. Is he shaking the hand that killed Voldemort? Which one is Harry Potter’s wand hand, he can’t remember even though he’s _sure_ he’s read it somewhere, this is so surreal-

“Pleasure,” says Harry Potter.  After they’ve stopped shaking hands, he continues, “Hermione Flooed me about an hour ago and told me about everything that happened at Madam Puddifoot’s.”

“Now everyone’s gonna know that Harry and I were in Hogsmeade when we weren’t allowed,” Louis blurts out before he can stop himself.

Harry Potter laughs, his eyes crinkling behind his glasses.  “Probably. But you two will most likely get detention together, at least, so it can’t be _that_  bad.”

Louis nods sullenly.

“Anyway,” Harry Potter continues, “I’m sure you’re still very shaken up from what happened a few hours ago, and I don’t want to jump into things too quickly, but we’ve found out some information since then that has us very worried.”

Louis’s stomach feels heavy and full all at once, like he might throw up again. He grips his Harry’s hand tighter and asks, “What - what sorts of things?”

Louis looks at Hermione first, who shifts her eyes nervously over to Harry Potter. “Well,” Harry says slowly, adjusting his glasses on his face, “Ron managed to apprehend the suspect at the scene, and once Hermione had taken you two to St. Mungo’s, he brought the man to the Ministry for questioning. Ron’s interrogating him personally, and he just sent me a Patronus not fifteen minutes ago informing me that the suspect freely admitted to being a PC.”

Both of them look at Louis expectantly, who stares back at them with what’s surely a stupid, blank expression on his face. “Sorry, what?”

“PC? Peace Crusaders?”

“Still doesn’t ring any bells, sorry.”

“Don’t you read the  _Daily Prophet_?” Harry Potter asks him sharply.

Louis frowns. “Draco - Professor Malfoy says it’s a load of crock.”

Harry laughs. “For most things, yes, but Romilda Vane has been doing some excellent investigative reporting lately on the mysterious murders happening all over the country.”

“I have heard about those,” says Louis. “It’s not like I don’t read at  _all._ There was that couple down near Cornwall, right? I remember reading about that town, it had a funny name-”

“Ottery St. Catchpole,” Hermione fills in.  “Yes, and they weren’t the only ones who were killed without any apparent motive or evidence.  There have been others, at least a dozen.”

“And they’ve all had the same two surnames,” says Harry Potter.  “Either Riddle or Gaunt.”

Louis doesn’t have either of those two surnames, so he isn’t sure why they’re telling him this. “Is that - am I meant to understand something from that? Sorry, because that doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“Louis, don’t you pay attention in History of Magic?” Hermione asks him.

“...No?”

“Does Professor Binns still teach it?” Harry Potter asks. Louis nods, and Harry bursts into laughter. “That’s why, then.  Alright, I’ll just tell you, then - ‘Riddle’ was Voldemort’s father’s surname, and ‘Gaunt’ was his mother’s. And the  _Prophet_  reported last week that the Peace Crusaders have recently claimed responsibility for all twenty of these murders, although they’ve left no confirming evidence that can be used to take them into custody.”

Louis frowns. “So… the person who tried to poison me was a Peace Crusader.”

Harry Potter nods.

“And lately the Peace Crusaders have been killing off people who might be related to Voldemort’s parents.”

Another nod.

“I don’t understand. Are you saying that you think that  _they_  think that  _I’m_ related to Voldemort’s parents?”

“We’re not sure,” Harry Potter says hesitantly. “You don’t have the same surname, which is the troubling part. We’re not sure why they’re targeting you, and we’re not sure what they know. That’s why Ron’s interrogating him as we speak.”

“Could it - it couldn’t possibly have to do with your father, could it?” Hermione speaks up tentatively.

Louis bristles at the insinuation. “My father’s surname was Austin.”

Harry Potter frowns even more at this. “I don’t even - is that a magical surname?”

“I don’t know,” says Louis. “No one at Hogwarts has it.  I only found out my father was magical, like, a month ago, so.”

Great. Now Harry Potter, of all people, knows that Louis was an accident. Brilliant.

Hermione and Harry look puzzled. 

“Well,” says Harry Potter slowly, “that makes everything even more confusing.  But I wouldn’t have come here after dinner on a Saturday night if I wasn’t greatly worried for your immediate personal safety, Louis. I don’t like the fact that they targeted you, because it means they know something that we don’t.”

“Am I - I’m not, like, in  _danger_  now, am I?” Louis asks hesitantly, holding his Harry’s hand even tighter.

“We don’t know,” Harry admits. “But, if you’re feeling up for it, I think it might be a good idea to go to the Ministry Archives and see if we can find out anything about you that might make you a target for the PCs. It might’ve even been a mistake, like they could’ve misinterpreted a stray piece of information and taken it to mean-”

“My file was stolen,” Louis blurts out, interrupting him. He’d forgotten until now that his file was  _stolen_  from St. Mungo’s a month ago, and  _that_ was the only reason he’d ended up finding out that his father was magical. He feels cold all over - he’d  _forgotten_  that someone out there had a good amount of his personal information.

“Pardon?”

“My medical file, from St. Mungo’s. It was stolen in December, I just remembered.”

“That’s right, there was that massive break-in,” Hermione remembers.

“Yeah, it wasn’t just my file, it was anyone who was born in the same month as me,” says Louis.

“That doesn’t sound good,” says Harry. “I’m  _really_  thinking now that we need to go to the archives.”

 _Christ,_ if someone had suggested a year ago that Harry Potter would be actively concerned about Louis’s safety Louis would have suggested they undergo psychiatric evaluation.

“Are they still open?” Hermione asks. “What time is it, anyway? I didn’t wear my watch to dinner because Ron says it stresses him out when I constantly check the time.”

“You do like to know the time,” Harry Potter says absently as he checks his own watch. “It’s just past ten. I think they keep it staffed twenty-four hours a day, don’t they?”

“You’re the one that works in the Ministry,” Hermione reminds him.

“Well, I don’t go out of my way to wander around the Archives during my lunch break, do I? I’ve only been in there a handful of times,” says Harry. “Hmm, maybe we should wait until tomorrow.”

“Is it alright if I stay here tonight, then?” Louis asks.  “I don’t want my - my boyfriend to wake up alone in a hospital, is all. I think they said they were keeping him overnight.”

That might be the first time Louis has said “boyfriend” out loud in reference to Harry, and it feels  _good_  to hear it out loud, even if it does mean he’s coming out to Harry Potter. Oh well. He seems like the kind of person who won’t treat Louis any differently.

“I’m sure that’ll be fine with them,” says Harry Potter. “They’ll probably want me to bring you two into the Aurors office for questioning as soon as your boyfriend - I never got his name-”

“Harry,” Louis informs him.

“Ah. Good name, that,” says Harry Potter, his mouth quirking up. “Anyway, as soon as Harry’s released it would be great if you could come in to answer a few questions, so hopefully you didn’t have any plans for tomorrow-”

Louis laughs. “It’s just a Sunday, I had the entire day set aside for doing nothing.”

“Excellent.”

Just then, Harry Styles begins to stir. Louis feels it in the way his hand clenches and unclenches just the tiniest bit, like he’s trying his muscles out again, and then all three of them see it when Harry starts to squirm and then blinks his eyes open again.

“Oh my god, I’ve never had to take a piss more in my  _life,”_  is the first thing Harry says.

When he notices that there are people in the room other than Louis and that one of those people is Harry fucking Potter, the second thing he says is, “What.”

xxx

After Harry has stammered out a million embarrassed apologies and a Healer arrives to help him stand up so he can walk to the toilet, Hermione and Harry Potter take their leave for the night with a promise to return tomorrow afternoon after Harry is discharged.

When the Healer helps Harry back into bed, she asks Louis, “Are you planning on staying the night, sweetheart? It’s getting quite late.”

“If that’s alright,” says Louis.

“Sure it is, I can have them bring in an extra cot for you. As for you, dear,” she continues, turning to Harry, “I’m going to need your WIN, because you came in here without any form of ID and you weren’t awake to tell us who you were.”

“Neither was I,” says Louis.

Harry laughs, and then gives the Healer his Wizarding Identification Number.  When she leaves to, presumably, pull his file, Harry looks over at Louis, and they really  _look_ at each other for the first time since the restaurant.

“Hi,” Harry says eventually.

“Hi yourself,” says Louis.

Neither of them say anything for a bit, but Louis takes Harry’s hand again, and this time Harry squeezes back just as tightly. Louis doesn’t even want to talk about it at all, doesn’t want to acknowledge the fact that Harry almost  _died-_

“So, I guess I probably shouldn’t have drank that coffee,” says Harry, interrupting Louis’s thoughts.  “Because the last thing I remember is drinking it, and next thing I know I wake up in the hospital.”

Louis laughs, but it’s a hollow sound. “Yeah, you were, um - the coffee was poisoned, so.”

“It was  _poisoned?_ ” Harry asks, his eyebrows flying up.  “What the fuck? What did I do, what happened?”

“Well, you sort of, um-” Louis grips Harry’s hand tighter- “you sort of collapsed, and - seized? A little bit? And your skin turned grey and your eyes rolled back - fuck, it was  _awful.”_

“Shit.”

“Yeah, and the whole restaurant flipped a shit because I was kind of screaming, like, a lot, and I think Ron tackled the guy who brought me the coffee-”

“No chance McGonagall doesn’t know we snuck out by now,” says Harry. “Sounds like a scene.”

“That’s what I said too!” Louis exclaims, laughing.

“How did I - you said I was seizing, though, and you couldn’t have Apparated with me to St. Mungo’s if I was like that, so how did I… not die?”

Louis shudders. “Well, remember how I told you that Draco and I made a new potion today?”

“Vaguely. You sort of pushed me on the bed right afterward, so.”

Louis’s mouth quirks up in a smirk. “Right. But the point is - what we were trying to make, and what we apparently  _did_  make, was a universal antidote to all poisons. And I still had it with me in my pocket at the restaurant because I wore the same trousers I was wearing earlier in the day when he gave me a vial to take to Madam Pomfrey, but she wasn’t  _there_  to take it so I kept it and, fuck.  A lot of little things, you know? They all just lined up, thank fuck, so I still had it with me and I took a huge fucking chance because I thought you were  _dying_  and gave you the untested antidote.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I know.”

Harry has a death grip on Louis’s hand by this point, and he looks like he’s about to say something else when the Healer comes bustling back into the room.

“Harry Styles, date of birth one two ninety-two?”

“That’s me,” says Harry.

“Excellent.  You’re all set to stay the night for observation, then. And I know your file says you’re of age, so I’m not  _required_ to call any family members to let them know you’re here, but is there anyone you’d like me to contact?” the Healer asks.

“What time is it?” Harry asks.

“It should be, like, half-ten by now, I think,” says Louis.

“That’s right,” says the Healer.

“I think I’m gonna wait to call my mum until after I’m out,” Harry decides. “If I’m like - I’m stable, right?”

The Healer nods.

“Yeah, so there’s no need for her to worry, and I’ll just let her know after the fact.”

The Healer nods understandingly. “My name is Bonnie, by the way, and I’m going to be here until seven in the morning, so if you ever need anything you can just press the Healer’s call button.”

“Will do,” says Harry with a tired smile.

“And I have them bringing up a cot for you, …?”

“Louis,” Louis finishes. “But I - the bed’s big enough for two, isn’t it? Unless that’s not allowed.”

“Yes, it is. We’re required by policy to have them bring in a cot, but we’re not requiring you to use it,” says Bonnie with a smile. “Try to get some rest, now, Harry. You’ve been through a lot today.”

“Thanks.”

Once Bonnie’s left the room, Louis toes off his shoes in preparation to climb onto the hospital bed next to Harry.

“Could you help me brush my teeth?” Harry asks him before he can get into bed.

“So demanding,” Louis tuts. He knows, though, that Harry doesn’t like to go to sleep at night without having a clean mouth.

“Looou,” Harry whines.

“Fine, fine,” says Louis, getting up and crossing to the other side of the bed so he can help Harry up, making sure he doesn’t jostle the IV line in the process.  It’s slow going getting to the toilet, as Harry is even more fumbling and unsure of his footing than usual, but they make it there eventually. All Louis has to do once Harry’s by the sink is keep a steadying hand on Harry’s side to make sure he doesn’t fall over or anything.

While they’re in the bathroom, Louis hears people moving about in the main part of the hospital room, and the squeak of a frame suggests that they’re setting up a metal cot. Once Harry’s rinsed his mouth out and sighed happily, Louis helps him back out into the main room; as he suspected, a metal cot with a thin-looking mattress and hospital pillow has been set up next to Harry’s bed.

“You’re sleeping with me, right?” Harry asks as Louis helps him flop back into bed. He has to writhe around a bit like a beached whale a couples times before he’s apparently situated under the covers the way he wants to be.

“Course,” says Louis. A quick trip across the room to shut the lights off is all Louis needs to do before he’s climbing into bed as well on the other side, snuggling under the covers and pulling Harry close.

“You smell,” he informs Harry, wrinkling his nose at the dried sweat on Harry’s neck.

Harry huffs. “Sorry I worked up a sweat trying not to die. I’ll try to be more considerate of your delicate nose next time.”

Louis laughs. “There’s not going to _be_ a next time, silly. You’re safe with me now.”

“We can’t go through life with you attached to me like this, though.”

“Hmph, we’ll just see if we can’t,” says Louis, hugging Harry tighter.

After five minutes have passed and Louis is sure that Harry’s already fallen asleep, Harry’s body suddenly goes stiff next to him.

“Harry?” he asks, alarmed.

“Louis,” Harry gasps back. “The poison - there was - that was  _your_  coffee.”

Ah, yes. Louis had been hoping to delay this conversation until tomorrow after Harry’s had some time to calm down and a decent night’s sleep. “Yeah, that’s why Harry Potter was here earlier, we’re - everyone’s trying to figure out why.”

“So someone - someone tried to -?”

Harry can’t even get the words out he’s so upset, and he’d been laying on his back but now he lurches onto his side and holds Louis even tighter than Louis had been holding him not ten seconds ago.

“Harry, you’re crushing me-”

“Too fucking bad. I can’t believe - what the fuck, Louis, what the  _fuck,”_ Harry mutters into his hair.

“Shh,” Louis shushes him. Harry’s started to shake a little, gripping Louis so tightly it’s probably going to bruise. “We don’t know anything for sure yet, but I’m here now, okay, and we’re both safe.”

This seems to mollify Harry somewhat, as his hold decreases in intensity from Lung-Squeezing And Life-Threatening to Only Slightly Uncomfortable. Louis chooses not to mention the fact that the people who tried to kill him are part of the Peace Crusaders and that they’ve been known to target possible relatives of Voldemort. He’ll save that bit of information for tomorrow, if it becomes apparent that it’s relevant, or also maybe  _never._ He doesn’t want to burden Harry with even more stressful knowledge that might not even be related.

“And you’ll be here when I wake up?” Harry mumbles into his hair, shifting against him until he’s slotted a thigh in between Louis’s own. There can’t possibly be even a single molecule of air between their bodies at this point.

Louis closes his eyes, feeling Harry’s frightened heartbeat pulse against his cheek through the thin hospital gown Harry’s wearing. “Always.”

xxx

The night of sleep he gets in St. Mungo’s isn’t the best Louis has ever had, not by a long shot.  He keeps drifting in and out of consciousness, too hyped up on adrenaline and stale fear to fully relax. Bonnie comes in every couples of hours to check Harry’s vitals by scanning him with her wand, and the first time she comes in she has to gently disentangle the two boys and roll Harry onto his back to scan him properly.

“Sorry, love,” she whispers the first time, after Louis jolts awake in fright at the sensation of somebody pulling Harry away from him. Harry, in contrast, is so exhausted that he doesn’t stir at all.

Everything seems to be in order, though - Bonnie never looks anything but pleased at whatever information she gleans from the scans.  At seven in the morning, another Healer arrives to replace Bonnie; two hours later, Harry wakes up and announces that he needs to use the toilet again.

“Good morning, dear,” the Healer says to Louis after she’s made sure Harry can walk to the bathroom on his own.

“Morning,” Louis mumbles, heaving himself out of bed and flopping straight into a chair instead.  He feels tired still, lethargic and a little bit gross, but let it never be said that Louis is not polite to medical staff.  His mum taught him better than that. “I’m Louis, nice to meet you.”

“And my name is Margaret, it’s a pleasure,” says the Healer.  “I’ll be here until half-three, but I think Mr. Styles is due to discharged before then. Would you like anything to eat for breakfast? I can have the nurse’s station call down to the cafeteria for you, if you’d like.”

“Oh, no, I - I might go down there myself, actually, just so I can use my legs,” says Louis. “What floor is it on?”

“It’s in the basement,” Margaret tells him. Just like the hospital Louis’s mum works in, then.

“Okay. Oh, does Harry get breakfast or should I pick him up something as well?”

“He gets a special hospital breakfast.  Low salt, easy on the tummy and all that, we have to make sure he can keep it down before we let him go.”

Louis winces sympathetically - there’s no way a low-salt hospital breakfast could be enjoyable in any way, shape, or form.

“Alright.  Harry,” he yells, hoping Harry can hear him in the bathroom, “Harry, I’m going to go get something to eat from the cafeteria.”

“Get me something, too, I’m starving,” Harry yells back.

Louis cringes guiltily, making Margaret laugh. “You can pick something up for after he’s discharged,” she suggests.

“On it,” says Louis, standing up unsteadily and slipping his shoes on. He feels drowsy still, like he needs to find the nearest available cuppa and chug it all in one go. He’s probably going to do just that, actually.

The cafeteria is a short elevator ride away, during which Louis discovers that they were in the Poison Recovery Ward, which is on the fifth floor. The have an entire  _wing_  for victims of poisoning? Christ. Then again, not all poisonings are malicious, Louis supposes - potions accidents happen all the time, there are food and drink allergies to consider, and he knows that if some common magical drinks are left in the fridge too long they tend to go bad in a very dangerous way.

When Louis finally reaches the cafeteria, he discovers that it’s large and busier than he expected it to be. There’s a vending machine of Honeyduke’s sweets on the far wall, which seems somehow ironic (even though Louis’s mum  _has_  told him she once worked in a children’s hospital with a KFC in the basement).

He doesn’t much fancy chocolate for breakfast, though, so he heads over to get in the queue for hot food, suddenly finding himself ravenously hungry. It’s probably because last night he managed to throw up the only thing he’d eaten in the past twenty-four hours, Louis muses as he accepts a helping of bacon and eggs.

After he’s also grabbed two croissants and an extra-large cup of hot water plus a Yorkshire teabag, Louis pays at the register and snags one of the precious few remaining empty tables, setting his tray down.  He happily begins to steep the tea, checking his watch so he’ll know when to take the bag out.

“How’s Olly doing?” asks an older woman sitting at the table to his right. She’s sitting with a couple who look to be about a generation younger than her.

“Better, better,” sighs the tired-looking younger woman, who looks to be in her mid-thirties.  “He slept almost the whole night through without waking up and shrieking.”

“Wish I could say the same for myself,” grumbles the man, probably her husband.

“Michael!” scolds the woman.

“What? Don’t tell me you could sleep either, what with those two Healers gossiping outside our door for half the bloody night.”

The woman frowns. “They aren’t usually like that…”

“They should  _never_  be like that,” fumes Michael. “It’s not right, you know, privacy and all that, plus they kept me up. I don’t care how bloody interesting it is that someone got poisoned at Madam Puddifoot’s yesterday-”

“Someone got  _poisoned_  at Madam  _Puddifoot’s_  yesterday?” the older woman breaks in, sounding shocked.

“Mum, keep your voice down,” the younger woman pleads, looking around.

“Did they die?” the older woman asks, leaning in and ignoring her daughter completely.

“No, no, their date apparently had an antidote on them,” says Michael. “Saved the day, and all that. If you ask me, though, it all sounds a bit fishy. Why would you carry a poison antidote to dinner out at a nice restaurant? The  _specific_  antidote necessary for the poison in question, no less?”

“Sounds like the one with the antidote was trying to play the hero,” the older woman whispers conspiratorially. “Maybe it was all a big set-up.”

Horrified, Louis just barely prevents a large piece of unchewed bacon from falling out of his open mouth. Is - is that what people  _think?_

“Mum, surely you don’t think-”

“I’m not saying I think anything yet,” the older woman says dismissively around a mouthful of toast.  _“I’m_ going to wait for the  _Prophet_  to report on the full story before I decide anything. I’m just saying something about it sounds funny to me, is all.”

That’s all they have to say on the subject, apparently, because they go back then to talking about Olly, who they’re worried might have a rare genetic condition that causes him to mimic a Banshee.

Louis is so upset by their suspicions, though, that he over-steeps his tea and almost drops one of his croissants on the floor because his hands are shaking so badly.  He hastily finishes the rest of his breakfast even though he’s quite suddenly no longer hungry in the slightest.

Louis has to wonder, though, long after the family stops discussing the poisoning, if that would be anyone’s default reaction upon learning about the story:  _suspecting Louis._

He knows that his  _friends_  wouldn’t think that. Obviously anyone who’s ever seen him and Harry interact knows that Louis would  _never,_ that Louis would literally poison  _himself_ before he’d poison Harry. Louis just hopes that the  _Prophet_  bothers to find out the facts before they publish any sort of story, but he doesn’t have particularly high hopes.

Louis sighs and gets up, depositing his empty tray in the appropriate receptacle. He stops by the “bakery” section again and picks up a chocolate croissant for Harry, and then he’s on his way back up to the room again, his steps significantly heavier.

When Louis re-enters Harry’s hospital room, he finds his totally-awake and healthy-looking boyfriend having a grand old laugh with Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Draco Malfoy. Typical.

“Oh, hi Louis!” Harry Potter waves at him, effectively convincing him that last night’s conversation had not, in fact, been a fever dream. “Where’ve you been?”

“H-Hi,” Louis stammers. “I was, um, getting breakfast. I got you something to eattoo, Haz.”

“Oh, thank Christ,” says Harry. “I just got forced to eat probably the blandest meal of my life. In front of Harry Potter, no less.”

Louis cracks up.

“And you’ve kept it down, is the important part,” says Margaret, bustling into the already-crowded hospital room.

“Have you, um, found anything else out?” Louis asks the other three adults. Well, he and Harry are technically adults, too, but he doesn’t think of them that way.

“Well, we found out that there was a crowd of reporters at the front door,” says Hermione, grimacing.

“There were people talking about it in the cafeteria when I was eating breakfast,” Louis tells them. “Apparently all the Healers are gossiping about it.”

“Well, that’s unprofessional,” says Margaret, frowning as she takes out Harry’s IV. Louis sees Harry grimace and has to fight the urge to race over to his side, reminding himself that he’s still in the same room as Harry fucking Potter.

“I mean, like, no names or anything,” Louis says instead of walking across the room. “And people who were in the restaurant yesterday are probably talking about it, too. I’m not sure how much anybody knows.”

“For one, we know that our antidote works,” Draco speaks up, smiling at him.

“Thank fuck,” says Louis, not even bothering to apologize for his language.

Harry Potter seems to agree. “That was quick thinking on your part, Louis.”

“Kind of how you always got by, Potter,” says Draco, but there’s no venom behind it - in fact, he’s smiling.

“I pretty much lived in a constant state of what-ifs,” Harry Potter agrees with a chuckle. “I had permanent gooseflesh, really.”

They all laugh.

“Did you test his blood to find out what the poison was?” Hermione asks Margaret once the laughter has died down.

“We couldn’t tell anything from his blood because the poison was all neutralized by the antidote,” says Margaret, “but based on Harry’s symptoms in the restaurant, the on-call doctor wrote on his chart that it was moonseed.”

They all gasp, and Louis finally stops resisting the urge to cross to Harry’s bed and hold his hand.

“Holy shit,” says Draco eloquently.

Holy shit is right.  Louis has read about moonseed in Potions books - every part of the plant is poisonous, and it’s known to kill within minutes if untreated.

“I don’t mean to alarm you, Louis,” Harry Potter says slowly, “but it seems like the PC very much want you dead.”

“Well,” Louis says in response. Well. That’s. That’s  _slightly_  alarming, is the thing.

“Is this a dream? Am I dreaming?” Harry Styles asks suddenly. “Sorry, it’s just - yesterday I was just having a normal dinner with my boyfriend, and today I’m in St. Mungo’s recovering from moonseed poisoning and Harry Potter is telling my boyfriend his life is in danger.”

Even though Louis’s life is apparently in danger, he still can’t help but feel giddy at the fact that Harry called him his  _boyfriend_  twice in one sentence.

“It does seem a bit surreal,” says Draco. “Shit like this hasn’t really happened since Voldemort was in power, to be honest. Hogwarts students aren’t normally attacked on nights out.”

Maybe this is all bad karma for sneaking into Hogsmeade, Louis muses bitterly.

“Sorry to interrupt,” says Margaret, “but you’re all set to go now, Harry. All your vitals look wonderful, and you haven’t experienced any nausea, right?”

“Right,” says Harry.

“Excellent,” says Margaret. “All your belongings are in that bag hanging on the coat hook.”

“Thanks for taking care of me,” Harry tells her.

“Of course, dear.”

“This is-” Louis feels bad even asking this, but after what he overheard in the cafeteria he doesn’t want to take any chances- “This is all confidential, right?”

Margaret smiles at him in a stern, determined sort of way, reminding Louis oddly of Headmistress McGonagall. “I’ve been working at St. Mungo’s for over thirty years now, and I’ve always held confidentiality as my highest priority, Louis. You can trust everything with me.”

“Thank you,” Louis says gratefully.

Once Margaret has left the room, Hermione says, “Alright, well I guess we three can wait outside while you get dressed, Harry. We were planning on heading to the Ministry after this, if that’s alright with you two. Ron’s already there interrogating the suspect again, he barely slept four hours last night.  I haven’t seen him that willing to lose sleep in years.”

“That’s fine,” says Louis, sighing a bit. What he’d really like most right now is a decade-long nap, but there are a lot of questions that need answering, so.

Once it’s just Louis and Harry in the hospital room, Harry gets out of bed, shedding the flimsy hospital gown and leaving himself naked as the day he was born.

“Hello,” Louis says in surprise, raising an eyebrow. The love bite he left over Harry’s heart yesterday is still visible, standing out red against Harry’s pale skin.

Harry smiles at him. “My eyes are up here,” he says, and Louis laughs as he looks up to see Harry blushing. The younger boy then crosses the room to get dressed, pulling his clothes out of the bag and covering himself up piece by piece. Once he’s completely dressed, he shuffles back over to Louis and pulls him so tightly into a hug that Louis thinks his spine might break. Louis doesn’t mind at all.

“I don’t wanna do this,” Louis mumbles into Harry’s chest.

Harry hums in sympathy.

“I wanna go home,” Louis continues sadly. “Back to Hogwarts, I mean. Wanna lay down and take a nap with you and wake up in a different universe where none of this is happening.”

“Lou,” Harry says sadly. He doesn’t say anything else, though - what is there to say? This is a situation that both of them are completely unprepared for.

They stand there for a minute or two completely wrapped up in each other, clinging to each other tightly. Louis lets Harry’s steady heartbeat calm him until he feels a bit more like himself again and a bit less like death warmed over.

xxx

Once they Floo to the Ministry (and therefore sneakily avoid the crowd waiting outside the front door of the hospital), Harry Potter takes Louis straight to the Ministry Archives while Hermione, Draco, and Harry Styles go to a different floor to watch the ongoing interrogation. Apparently, Ron Weasley hasn’t been able to administer the Veritaserum yet due to a new law forbidding the administration of the truth-telling potion until sixteen hours after arrest.

“You know your WIN, right?” Harry Potter asks Louis as they walk toward a bank of lifts.  “You’re definitely going to need it to get any information on yourself.”

“Of course I do,” says Louis, affronted.

“Just making sure.”

They take the lift up several floors, and then it very abruptly starts traveling horizontally. Louis curses in surprised and only just manages to grab onto a handrail so he isn’t catapulted across the small space. The two of them do manage to make it to the Archives in one piece, though, and once Louis had made sure he isn’t going to vomit the first second he opens his mouth, he nods slightly to Harry Potter to indicate that he’s ready and the two of them go inside.

Louis was expecting a large hall filled with shelves and stacks of files, but what he’s met with instead is a small office with a receptionist sitting at a desk and several uncomfortable-looking chairs.

“Hi, Hannah,” Harry says with a smile.

“Harry Potter! What brings you up here on a Sunday?” the receptionist - Hannah - asks, smiling. “And who’s this handsome lad you’ve brought with you?”

“Hannah, this is Louis,” says Harry. “He’s a seventh-year at Hogwarts.  I’ll spare you the details, but it’s kind of urgent that we get a look at his file today.”

“Hi, Louis,” says Hannah cheerfully, unfazed. “That’s quite alright, I just need your Wizarding Identification Number to start, love.”

Louis rattles it off haltingly - he’d had to get a new one when his file at St. Mungo’s was stolen, and it’s a bit difficult to remember the new number when the old one is ingrained into his brain - and Hannah writes the numbers down on a pad of paper. “One moment, please.”

Hannah gets up from her seat and disappears behind an ominous, sturdy-looking door after inserting her wand into a keyhole and placing her hand on some sort of scanning pad.

“It’s incredibly high security,” Harry Potter comments after a moment. “I’ve heard that there are three more doors past this one, each with a guard that the secretary on duty has to pass before actually getting to the Archival Hall.”

A bit more high-security than St. Mungo’s, then, Louis thinks bitterly. He still can’t believe someone managed to steal an entire  _month’s_  worth of medical files and get away with it, too.

They spend several minutes waiting in silence for Hannah to return with Louis’s file, during which Louis has to bite his tongue to keep from asking Harry Potter questions like  _Why is this happening_  and  _How did you deal with it when people were trying to kill you._

Eventually, though, Hannah returns with Louis’s file, opening it to the first page.

“Picture matches...” she murmurs, looking down at the file, up at Louis, and then down again. “Full name?”

“Louis William Tomlinson.”

“Date of birth?”

“December 24, 1991.”

“And repeat your WIN for me, love?”

Louis repeats it again.

“Sorry, just have to check to make sure you’re yourself,” says Hannah, finally handing Louis the file.

“No, it’s comforting, actually,” Louis tells her, knowing that no one else could have possibly seen it.

The first page is just Louis’s basic identification information, undoubtedly a “cover page” so the secretary can use it for confirmation without seeing any other information. Louis looks up at Harry Potter, who looks back at him and shrugs.

“No time like the present,” he says.

Louis swallows loudly and looks back at his file, his hands shaking slightly as he turns to the next page. On it is a family tree, of sorts, except there’s only one functional branch. Louis is at the top connected to his mother and father:  _Johannah Poulston,_   _b. 1971; Muggle, no further familial data_  and  _Edward Austin, 15 April 1966 - 31 March 1991._

Louis feels shock roll over his body when he sees that his father died in 1991, the same year Louis himself was born. In fact - he died  _before_  Louis was even born, because Louis was born in December. Louis groans a little at the upsetting, unwanted knowledge and covers the rest of the page up, needing to take a breather before he learns any more unpleasant things.

“Is there some sort of locating spell like the one at St. Mungo’s?” Louis asks Hannah weakly, his voice breaking a bit and his heart racing as he stalls to avoid looking at the rest of the information. “There’s no information about my mum in here, and she’s a Muggle.”

“That’s right,” says Hannah. “We have your mother’s name in there because she gave birth to you, but there’s no way we could produce any sort of spell to find out her family history after the fact.”

“Okay,” Louis says, swallowing loudly again. “Okay.”

“Louis,” Harry Potter prompts him gently. “Best to get it over with now, I think.”

Louis feels his face burn with shame and realizes that he can’t stall any longer. Slowly, he lifts his hand off of the other half of the page, the half containing his father’s family tree. There’s a name there, one he’s never seen before, his father’s mother - Louis’s grandmother, Christ _\- Rose Austin, b. 5 May 1945._

She’s still alive, then. Christ. Louis could - Louis could go and  _see_ her, probably, if he wanted, if  _she_ wanted. He feels sick. Louis feels his heart hammering against his ribcage as his eyes shift to the spot reserved for his father’s father, only to find that there’s no name there at all; instead, what’s printed are the words  _“Classified, Level I Clearance.”_

What?

“What?” Louis asks out loud, echoing his own thoughts. “What does that mean?”

He looks up at Harry Potter, who frowns. “I’m not sure, I’ve never seen that on a file before. And I’ve seen a lot of them, being an Auror and all. Hannah?”

“Yes, dear?”

“What does ‘classified’ mean when it’s applied to a person? And what in Merlin’s name does ‘level one clearance’ involve?”

“That’s the highest level there is,” Hannah says. “‘Classified’ means you have to get the Head of History’s permission to view the name at all. For level one, it means he has to come down here  _himself_  and personally retrieve the other file from the sub-archives, and you have to wait in a separate room.”

“What the - _really?_ All that for whoever my grandfather is?” Louis asks, stunned.

“Love, whomever your grandfather is, someone high-up in the Ministry thinks that his identity shouldn’t have even any miniscule chance in  _hell_  of being made public knowledge.”

“Is Ernie even in today?” Harry asks sharply, leaving Louis to gape like a fish out of water. “It’s a Sunday.”

“I don’t believe he’s in, no.”

“Can you - we should Floo him, then,” says Harry, sounding annoyed.

“I’d love to, dear, but Ernie has made it  _very_  clear to the staff that Sundays are his day off and he doesn’t wish to be bothered. He turns his Floo network off.”

“Oh, for _fuck’s_ \- sorry, sorry, I know it’s not your fault. You’re sure we can’t bypass that restriction and see the other file? It is  _Louis’s grandfather,_ after all, and I’m the senior-most Auror on staff right now.”

Hannah shakes her head regretfully. “I’m sorry, Harry. Even if I get you through this first door, the guards would only let Ernie through the rest.”

Harry Potter sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Look, I’ll try and Floo him just to see,” says Hannah apologetically, getting up from her desk again and going through a different door, one that looks much less like it belongs at a high-security prison.

“What good is it being the Chosen One if I don’t have enough clout to read a fucking name off a piece of parchment?” Harry grumbles quietly after she’s left.

Louis laughs wildly in response, the laugh taking on a bit of a hysterical edge from his bad night of sleep and disturbing new discoveries. It’s true, though - if Harry Potter can’t get clearance for something, who  _can?_

Hannah returns not a minute later. “I’m sorry, Harry, Ernie said he could fit you in first thing tomorrow morning but no earlier,” she says, sitting back down.

“His arse is probably still in bed,” says Harry Potter.  _“Fit me in,_ Merlin’s bollocks, this is  _important.”_

“Do they give, like, addresses and stuff?” Louis asks. “We could try visiting my - visiting Rose, maybe. I’m sure she knows who he is, she has to.”

“That’ll be on the next page,” says Hannah, but Harry is already flipping to it.

“It looks like she lives in northern Sheffield,” he says after a moment. In Yorkshire like him, then, Louis thinks with a lump in his throat. “And she’s magical, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to pop by and ask a couple of questions. We can do that if you want, Louis.”

Louis doesn’t - he doesn’t want to just ask her a  _couple of questions,_ though. Just like when he learned that his father was magical, his mind is already constructing an elaborate fantasy in which he’s tearfully reunited with his long-lost grandmother, staying for tea and learning all sorts of things about her, maybe leaving her with a picture or two to put over her fireplace. Louis wonders if she even knows that there’s a  _possibility_  he exists, given that her son passed away before Louis was even born. He wonders if Rose ever met his mum, if Edward took Louis’s mum home to meet his parents. He wonders if she has other children - other grandchildren.  Can he even  _call_  himself her grandchild if he’s never met her? Louis might have cousins he doesn’t even know about, maybe - maybe they’re all over for Sunday brunch, a big family get-together without him-

“Louis?”

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head.

Harry Potter gives him a strange look. “I asked if you were sure you wanted to go meet her. We don’t have to - like, as much as I’m making a big deal about it, we can always wait until the Head of History comes in tomorrow.”

Louis nods quickly. “Yeah, no, I definitely want to.”

When Louis was in his anxiety-trance, Harry had apparently written down Rose’s address on a piece of parchment. All that’s left to do now is give the file back to Hannah and say their goodbyes, and the next thing Louis knows they’re retracing their steps back into the main lobby of the Ministry of Magic.

“Should I tell Harry where I’m going?” Louis asks, suddenly feeling a bit lost and needy. “My Harry, I mean.”

Harry Potter smiles. “I’ll send Hermione a patronus.  _Expecto Patronum!_ ”

A silver stag bursts from the tip of Harry Potter’s wand, making Louis do a double take. It looks slightly different from Louis’s; its antlers are bigger and its snout is differently shaped, but it is as unmistakably a stag as Louis’s patronus is.

“Louis and I might have found a lead,” Harry tells the stag. “Going to Sheffield, be back soon.”

As it charges off, Louis says, “My patronus is a stag too.”

“Is it now?” asks Harry Potter, a smile in his voice as they walk toward the banks of Floo fireplaces. “Great minds think alike, I guess. My father’s was a stag as well.”

Louis wonders if  _his_  father’s was a stag, too. He tries not to feel too sad that he’ll probably never find out, pasting a smile on his face instead and rolling his shoulders to try and make them feel lighter.

“Alright, you’ve used Floo before, right?” Harry asks, pinching some green powder out of a bag hanging next to one of the fireplaces.

“Yeah, it’s the worst,” says Louis, mimicking him.

Harry Potter laughs. “Not as bad as Portkeys, I’d dare say. Now, I think we should Floo to the Chapeltown Wizarding city centre and try to get our bearings from there, because I don’t know exactly where we’re going. Unless you do.”

“Nope,” says Louis, popping the ‘p.’ “I’ve been to Sheffield before, but not the northern parishes.”

“City centre it is, then,” says Harry Potter, speaking just that into the roaring fireplace and tossing the Floo powder inside. He vanishes in a burst of green flames just a moment later, leaving Louis to follow suit.

A few very unpleasant seconds later during which he manages to get soot in his eyes and up his nose, Louis tumbles out onto a thick, coarse hearth rug seemingly all still in one piece, albeit coughing and spluttering. He feels hands under his armpits pull him up into a standing position, and Louis chokes out a “thanks” while he’s still wiping soot from his eyes.

“Welcome to Chapeltown!” a friendly voice exclaims. They must have Flooed straight out across from a welcome desk or something. Then, a beat later: “Mark my word, it’s Harry Potter! Great t’meet you, Mr. Potter, great t’meet you.”

Harry Potter laughs, letting go of Louis while Louis finally manages to clear his field of vision. “Thank you, sir, it’s great to meet you as well.”

“What can I do for you two today? John Thomas, at your service,” says the man, whom Louis now sees looks to be around fifty or sixty years old. He’s dark-skinned and completely bald, the top of his head shiny in a way that reminds Louis of his own grandfather - well, his mum’s father, that is. It shouldn’t be as comforting as it is, really, but the light reflecting off the top of the man’s head calms Louis down a little bit.

“We’re doing a bit of detective work, you might say,” says Harry, crossing over and showing John the slip of parchment. “I was wondering if you might be able to point us in the direction of this address.”

John’s eyes widen in recognition after a moment or two. “Oh, that’s Chester and Rose’s place! My wife and I go over to have supper with them every Thursday. They aren’t in trouble, are they? Wouldn’t hurt a fly-”

“No, no, they’re not in trouble,” Harry laughs. “Just trying to help Louis here track down a distant relative, thought they might be able to help.”

‘Grandfather’ isn’t exactly a distant relative, but Louis appreciates the discretion.

“Well, best of luck to you,” says John, pulling out a map of Chapeltown from a drawer in his desk. “Rose might ask you to stay for tea, just a warning. Now, you’re going to go out the front doors over there and take a right…”

Once John has outlined their directions for them, Harry Potter thanks him profusely and Louis gives him a small, meek wave as the two of them make their way out into the cold January air. They both hastily button up their coats, and Louis tugs on his beanie, making sure his ears are covered.

“I have a question,” Louis says once they’ve stopped at an intersection, waiting for the light to turn so they can cross the street. “You - so, remember how I told you that people were talking about this in the cafeteria? About somebody getting poisoned at Madam Puddifoot’s?”

“Yeah,” says Harry.

“Well, um - after they, well, they found out the details, like the fact that the second person had an antidote on them, and they got really suspicious.” The light changes and the two of them begin to cross the street. “Like, they think  _I_  poisoned him so I could save him. How fucking stupid is that? That’s like setting fire to someone’s house so you can show up with a hose and save the day. Who  _does_  that?”

Harry Potter chuckles. “Is that your question? Who’d be evil enough to do that?”

“No, no, that’s - I guess my question is, do people automatically assume the worst like that? Like, when the  _Prophet_  publishes the story, they’re aren’t going to bother to find out that I’m Dr- um, Professor Malfoy’s potions apprentice and that earlier in the day we were trying to brew a universal antidote, I expect, so - is everyone gonna think that I did it on purpose?”

Harry sighs. “Louis, my experience is that the general public takes a little bit of a sick interest in other people’s misfortunes - they’d never admit to it, obviously, but whenever the  _Prophet_  reports on any type of scandal, it’s just juicier gossip that families can bring to the dinner table. They tend to assume that whatever makes the situation the _most_ fucked up is true until proven otherwise. People thought for a while that  _I_ was the one who killed Dumbledore, if you can believe that.”

Louis gasps. He’s read about Professor Dumbledore in all sorts of biographies and history books. “No way. You were like his apprentice, weren’t you?”

“Of sorts,” says Harry. They’re passing by a church, now, and Muggles are starting to trickle out of it, milling about outside and chatting. Just getting out of services, probably - Louis forgot that it was a Sunday. Eventually, Harry continues, “My point is, if it seems more scandalous that _you_ were the one that poisoned Harry and then gave him the antidote to paint yourself as the hero, people are going to spread that rumor around as much as they can.”

Louis had been dreading this, but it hurts even more to hear it said out loud.

“I would never,” he says in a small voice, staring at the sidewalk sadly.

He feels a hand on his shoulder the next second, and when he turns to look at Harry, the older wizard is smiling at him in a sad, knowing way.

“I know you wouldn’t,” he says. “More importantly,  _you_  know you wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, but-”

“But nothing. You know the truth, and the people you care about know the truth, or at least they will once you get a chance to talk to them. That’s what’s important, I  _promise_  you, even if it might not seem like it now,” Harry Potter assures him, squeezing his shoulder. “Trust me on this one.”

Louis swallows another mouthful of bitterness and sadness and nods, feeling like this is going to be especially important to keep in mind in the coming days. And if Harry fucking Potter is giving him life advice for free, he should probably fucking listen.

“Thanks,” he says eventually, feeling his chest loosen a little. “Sorry, it’s just - twenty-four hours ago, I was a nobody, relatively speaking, and now people only care about me because they want to find out my name and slag on me in the papers.”

“That’s people for you,” says Harry Potter, sighing apologetically. “I think this is the house, here.”

It’s a modest size, made of tan-colored bricks with a red-painted garage. It feels like Louis blinks and all of a sudden they’re up on the front porch - he’s so antsy and scatterbrained right now. 

“Would you like to do the honors of ringing the doorbell?” Harry asks him.

Louis nods, breathing in and out a couple of times before pressing the tiny button. He doesn’t know what he’s going to find. He doesn’t know if “Chester” of “Chester and Rose” is his grandfather, if he’s dangerous enough to be ‘classified,’ if Rose is even home-

Suddenly, the door opens, and Louis finds himself face-to-face with an older man, mid-seventies, maybe, with a full head of white hair and a large pair of spectacles sitting on his nose. He doesn’t  _look_  particularly dangerous.

“Hullo,” he greets them, peering at them in a curious manner. “What can I do for you two boys?”

“Good afternoon, sir. My name is Harry Potter and I’m an Auror from the Ministry of-”

“Blimey! Harry Potter, you say?” the man exclaims, opening the screen door so he can look at Harry closer. “It  _is_  you! Well, why didn’t you say so? Pleasure to meet you, sir, come on in, come on in, I think Rose was just starting to make sandwiches for lunch. Rose! We’ve got company!”

No  _way_  is he evil, Louis thinks as the two of them make their way inside.

“This would be Rose Austin, no?” Harry Potter asks as the three of them head into the kitchen.

Chester makes a little  _harrumph_  noise. “I daresay she’s been Rose Martin for forty years now, Mr. Potter.”

“Oh, hush, Chester,” laughs the grey-haired woman over by the stove. Her back is to then, but Louis  _knows,_ that’s - her. His grandmother. His grandmother who he’s never met before, a whole  _part_  of him he was completely unaware of until now. He feels the absurd urge to run over and hug her, which he quickly ignores.

Then she turns around, brushing an errant strand of hair off her forehead, and Louis now has to fight the urge to  _gasp -_ Louis looks a good deal like his sisters, but there’s always been this certain facial structure that they got from their father that he doesn’t have, he’s always looked a little bit _different_  than them, and right now he sees all of those differences reflected in this woman’s smiling, aged face.

“Well hello there,” she says, looking right at him. Louis realizes that his jaw had literally dropped as soon as he’d seen her. “I know Harry Potter is standing in my kitchen, too, but who might you be, love?”

“I’m - I’m Louis,” he stammers out, feeling stupid.

“What’s your family name, dear? If you don’t mind me asking. You look familiar, is all,” says Rose, squinting at him. “I’m Rose, by the way, pleased to meet you both.”

“Tomlinson,” says Louis, although he knows that’s not helpful. “My surname is Tomlinson.”

“Looks a bit like you, actually, Rose,” Chester puts in.

Louis gulps.

“Actually, that’s - sort of why we’re here,” says Harry Potter, trying valiantly to play the moderator. “Would you mind if we had a seat? I don’t want to intrude on your lunch-”

“Oh, it’s fine, it’s fine,” says Rose, waving a hand dismissively. “There’s soup enough for you two as well, if you’d like it. I can make some more sandwiches if you’re hungry-”

“Please, don’t make anything else just for us,” says Harry.

“Tea, then?”

Tea sounds good to Louis, who finds himself nodding along enthusiastically before he knows what he’s doing.

Rose laughs. “A boy after my own heart.”

It makes Louis’s heart clench, a bit, makes his chest feel too tight.

The four of them sit down to a lunch of sorts, with tomato soup and tea for everyone and sandwiches for the older couple. They make small talk until Rose and Chester have finished their sandwiches; Harry Potter probably doesn’t want to spring anything on them while they’re still eating, which Louis definitely agrees is a good idea.

After Louis has helped Rose put all the dirty dishes in the sink (even after several insistences each from both Chester and Rose that he doesn’t need to help), Chester suggests, “Why don’t we go into the sitting room? It’s much more comfortable.”

So, that’s how they end up in a room overlooking the main road equipped with several comfy couches, a piano, and some sort of large basin next to a shelf of sparkling gold vials.

“You have a Pensieve,” Harry Potter says as they sit down, sounding surprised. Oh, so  _that’s_  what a Pensieve looks like. Louis has never seen one in real life, he’s only read about them, how they can be used to store and relive memories of old.

“Oh, yes,” says Chester, making himself comfortable next to Rose on the opposite couch. “It was a fairly big investment, but we were told that a lot of older couples are getting them these days. Keeps the mind less cluttered, you know, and we sometimes go in together to relive some of our favorite memories exactly as they were, rather than the fuzzy versions we still keep in our heads.”

“Like our wedding,” says Rose, her eyes crinkling fondly at the corners.

Oh, fuck, that’s adorable. This is exactly the kind of lasting, loving marriage Louis likes to imagine himself having when he’s older, and he also has his mind set on the curly-haired boy he wants to share it with.

“That’s lovely,” he says, unable to keep the smile off his face.

“We think so too,” says Chester, laughing. “Now, I don’t mean to be blunt, but I doubt that this was an entirely random visit, seeing as Harry Potter is currently sat in my sitting room.”

They all laugh.

“So, what brings you two here on a Sunday afternoon?”

Louis looks at Harry Potter, feeling completely helpless and trusting him to move things along in a way Louis simply isn’t emotionally equipped to do.

“So…” Harry Potter starts, his brow working in concentration, “recently Louis found out he had a file at St. Mungo’s, meaning that at least one of his parents is magical.”

“Right,” says Chester, nodding.

“His mother is a Muggle, and he’d never known his father, but his mother had never said anything to suggest his father was anything but a Muggle as well, if I’m recounting correctly,” Harry continues.

Draco must have filled Harry Potter in this morning. “Right, my mum said he’d never, um, indicated he could do magic,” says Louis slowly.

“But then he discovered his father was, in fact, magical,” continues Harry, “and so he wanted to find out more about that side of the family, so today we went through the Archives at the Ministry of Magic and discovered that, um, in his file it said that his father’s mother - his grandmother - is you, Mrs. Martin.”

Rose’s eyebrows shoot up into her hairline, as do Chester’s. Harry left out a lot of things, but Louis figures it’s unnecessary to burden these two sweet old people with the knowledge that someone recently tried to kill him.

“You were Rose Austin before you were married, right?”

Rose nods. “That’s how names always show up in official magical archives, though. The birth name - the given name, not the married name. I used to work in the Ministry’s satellite branch in downtown Sheffield, s’how I know.”

“Alright, so. One of your sons was Louis’s father, but Louis had never known him-”

“Hold on a second,” Chester cuts in, looking upset.  _“One_  of our sons? We’ve only got one son, and George would  _never_  abandon a woman with their young child. I raised him better than that.”

The four of them sit in tense silence, then, Louis wishing he could shrink into the floor. Maybe he’ll Disapparate if things get too bad.

“Wait, Ches,” Rose says after a beat, her facial expression changing drastically, like she’s just had an epiphany, “I don’t think they’re talking about Georgie.”

“Well, who else could they be talking about?” asks Chester. “We don’t have any other sons, do we, unless you managed to somehow have one without-” He cuts off then, bringing a hand up slowly to cover his mouth. “Oh.”

_Oh?_

“Oh,” Rose repeats softly. “Louis, love, what - what did it say your father’s name was?”

“Edward,” Louis tells her, unable to look her in the eye.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she murmurs, barely a whisper.

Louis is so,  _so_  confused.

“Sorry, I don’t think I’m following,” Harry Potter whispers, trying to keep with the delicate, quiet tone of the conversation.

“I’d be surprised if you were,” admits Chester. “I’m going to go make some more tea for all of us, I think. S’not really my story to tell, anyway.”

With that, he wraps an arm around his wife and presses a soft kiss to her cheek, which she leans into very slightly before he stands up and hobbles out of the room.

“Chester never met your father, Louis,” Rose says eventually, sipping at her cooling tea.

Louis had figured as much, but it’s still jarring to hear it said out loud. “He’s - he’s not my grandfather, then?”

“No, he’s not,” Rose shakes her head. “Not biologically speaking, at least.”

Louis wants to ask who it was, then, but he also very much  _doesn’t._

Harry Potter beats him to it. “Can you - do you think you could possibly give us an idea of who it was? For some reason, the information was withheld in Louis’s file and it’s very important that we-”

“He was an evil man,” says Rose suddenly, taking another sip of her tea. Her face remains fairly expressionless. “He was a rapist.”

Louis nearly falls out of his chair, and he feels his mouth drop open in horror.

“Oh - oh, my god, I’m so sorry-” Harry Potter stammers quickly.

“I appreciate that, love,” she says, smiling kindly at the both of them. “I don’t remember it at all, though, only that it happened.”

“Memory repression  _is_  common in cases of sexual assault-” Harry Potter begins to say.

“Oh, no, I didn’t repress it,” Rose tells them, shaking her head. “I had it professionally removed once it became legal to do so.”

Harry Potter nods, seemingly in understanding, and Louis feels at this point as if they’re speaking a different language. “How long ago?”

“They removed it a year or so after I met Chester,” says Rose. She looks over at Louis and must notice the lost, confused expression on his face. “I was… I was in a bad way before then, to put it lightly.”

“I’m so sorry,” croaks Louis.

“It’s quite alright,” says Rose. “I remember being upset, jumpy - I didn’t feel like I could get close to anyone, because it seemed like I could never forget being - being forced. I remember all of that, but now it almost seems like I’m remembering a bad dream, or someone  _else’s_  story, even.”

“Because you got rid of the original memory?” Louis asks slowly.

“That’s right. I don’t have the direct source of all those awful emotions anymore, because in 1970, the Wizengamot ruled that in cases of especially heinous assault or trauma, permanent memory removal was legal in order to provide the victim with a better quality of life.”

Louis doesn’t want to think about the fact that someone had judged what had happened to his grandmother as an “especially heinous assault.”  _All_ assault is heinous, he’d thought. Christ. He’s still reeling, still horrified.

“But I did live with that memory for six or seven years before it was removed, even though looking back on it now it all seems like a dream,” continues Rose. “I was especially upset within the first year, because I - I-”

She cuts off, looking at Louis sadly.

“I had a baby,” she says quietly, tucking a strand of silvery hair behind her ear. “Nine months after I was raped, I had a son. And I named him Edward.”

Louis knew this had been going in this direction, but he’s entirely unprepared for how upset and confused his grandmother’s admission makes him feel. At least eight different responses pop into his head, all of which he’d feel bad or uncomfortable saying for some reason or another, so he just keeps his mouth shut, nodding minutely and very possibly whimpering.

“I gave him up for adoption the day I had him,” Rose continues, and only now does a single tear start to slide down her cheek. She wipes at it hastily. “I - I  _couldn’t_ keep him, at least not at the time - I loved him, of course, he was only a baby, but I felt he deserved a mother who wasn’t damaged. He was adopted within a couple weeks, I was told.”

“Don’t say that,” Louis says quietly, his eyes starting to brim over with tears. “You’re not - you’re obviously a great mother.”

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out. “I just - I haven’t thought about Edward in years, not since I got a notice from the hospital that he had passed away, but now - I’m just looking at you, love, and you look so  _lost.”_

“Feel a bit that way, too,” Louis tries to joke, wiping at his eyes and barking out a laugh.

“Oh, darling.”

They sit there in contemplative silence for about a minute, during which Chester comes back in with a tray of fresh tea.  It’s black tea, strong how Louis likes it, and it helps to clear his head a little, even though he still feels like he wants to throw up and then sleep for about a month.

“Did - was your attacker ever convicted, Rose?” Harry Potter asks gently.

Rose shakes her head. “I never got his name, obviously, and none of the psychologists or Aurors I worked with had ever seen him before.”

That’s that, then. Louis is  _perfectly_  happy to go along without knowing who his real, disgusting,  _terrible_  biological grandfather is. They’ll just have to-

“Although, you’re welcome to check to see if you know him,” Rose continues, making Louis almost spill his tea in astonishment. “It was a bit before your time, Mr. Potter, but you  _did_  say this was very important.”

“I - you’re saying you still have the memory, then?” Harry Potter asks, sounding dumbfounded.

Rose nods, and Chester places a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I was required by law to keep it, just in case it was needed for evidence later. It never was, though, and it still hasn’t been.”

“Would it be - is that alright, then?” Harry Potter asks slowly. “I don’t want to burden you with any new information, but it’s not - this isn’t just _curiosity,_ else I wouldn’t even be asking. We wouldn’t even  _be_ here.”

Chester peers at them carefully. “And you aren’t going to tell us why?”

“I wouldn’t want to put you in danger,” says Harry.

Chester’s eyes widen. “Mother of Merlin. Well, don’t let me stand in your way, then. What d’you think, Rosie?”

“I think it’s fine,” says Rose, still looking at Louis with an odd mixture of fondness and pity. “you should be able to get a good look at his face before - before anything happens. And I’ll trust that you’ll use your discretion, mind you.”

As Harry Potter assures her that they’ll exit the memory right away, Louis can’t help but notice that his grandmother doesn’t look particularly bothered by the prospect of a magical celebrity and her long-lost grandson reliving the most traumatic experience of her life. He figures it’s because she doesn’t remember anything about it other than the fact that it happened.

Rose stands up then, setting her teacup on the ornate coffee table, and the other three hastily do the same.

“It’s in a little hidden compartment,” she tells them, crossing the room to the glass shelves of little vials, each one of which contains a memory. “Didn’t want to have it out here with the good memories, after all.”

They watch as she clicks open a little black drawer at the base of the memory cabinet, pulling out a small vial marked not with an event, like some of the other vials ( _“Our Wedding,” “Georgie’s 1st Steps”_ ), but just with a date:  _20-7-65._ Rose hands the vial to Harry Potter.

“Here you go,” she says, her voice shaking slightly. Louis notices up close that she is, in fact, several inches shorter than him, which makes him want to wrap her up in a great big hug.

“Thank you,” says Harry, taking the vial from her carefully. He uncaps it and tips it over into the silver basin. Louis watches as a silvery thread flows out of the vial and pools inside the Pensieve.

“I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything,” says Rose. “Maybe I’ll heat up some brownies, too.”

“Oh, you don’t have to-”

“Shh!” Roses silences Louis, pinching his cheek and making him wrinkle his nose.

Chester laughs. “C’mon now, Rosie, they’ve got work to do.”

The two of them make their way back into the kitchen, leaving Louis and Harry Potter alone with the Pensieve.

“Have you ever used a Pensieve before?” Harry asks him.

Louis shakes his head.

“It’s pretty easy, all you have to do is peer into it, and once you get your face close enough it’ll do the rest.”

“Alright,” says Louis, bending over to look into the shallow basin. He sees the silvery liquid swirl around, around, and suddenly his nose is almost touching the surface and he feels himself falling into a black abyss. He doesn’t scream. (Loudly, at least.)

Quick as he fell, though, his body rights itself again, and inky shapes start to appear in the grey mist he’s found himself in. Another second and Harry Potter is landing right beside him.

“Alright,” says the older wizard as the two of them watch their surroundings materialize, “I should’ve said this up there, probably, but just - be careful? I’m not sure what we’re going to find, but I’ll be right here the whole time.”

“Thanks,” says Louis, swallowing nervously.

It’s late July, Louis remembers - it’s only a memory, but vivid enough that he can feel the heat of the outdoors seeping through his winter jacket even though it’s nighttime. Late at night, from the looks of it - there’s no one on the streets at this hour.

“We’re definitely in London,” says Harry Potter. “Wizarding London.”

Louis nods, looking around and waiting for something to happen.

Five minutes later, a door opens to their left and they both turn to see a young woman in a long, flowing sundress exiting an apothecary shop. Louis isn’t sure why she was there so late, but she’s definitely closing up shop now, turning a magical key in the lock and casting  _Alohomora_  to make sure it’s sound.

When she turns around, Louis is startled to see that it’s Rose - or, it’s how Rose would’ve looked when she was in her mid-twenties. She had sandy blonde hair back then, and it’s braided down both sides of her head and tied off in little bows at the ends.

Rose sets off down the sidewalk, her thong sandals clacking against the pavement as she walks. Louis and Harry Potter follow her, Louis’s stomach burning with a heavy feeling of dread.

Just then, a little ways up across the street, the door to a pub bursts open and five men come stumbling out. 

“Alright, darling?” one of them yells lewdly over to Rose, who crosses her arms over her chest and hunches in on herself as she quickens her pace.

“I’m telling you, Tom, you’ve gone soft,” one of the other men is saying, evidently continuing on whatever conversation they’d been having inside the pub. They all look to be around or just under forty years old. “You can’t just go around plotting evil things and never  _doing_  any of them. Grindelwald got lazy, too, and now he’s rotting away in Nurmengard.”

Next to Louis, Harry Potter lets out an audible gasp and covers his mouth. Does he recognize one of them?

“I have  _plans,”_  one of the men - Tom - slurs. They’re all slurring their words at this point, as they’ve evidently been drinking for quite some time. “I’m not going to go around committing  _rash_  deeds all the time, am I?”

Tom is quite handsome, actually. He has a permanent sneer on his face, though, like he thinks himself above the other people he’s with. (Reminds Louis of Tom Parker, a bit, and not just because they share a name.)

“Just sayin’ you’re -  _hic!_  - y’might be losin’ your touch, a bit,” says another wizard. “Gonna be hard to get a followin’ if people don’ think you’re - _hic! -_ evil.”

Tom turns around jerkily to glare at the wizard. “How  _dare_  you, I - I-”

He whips his head around wildly and seems to notice Rose across the street, who’s walking as quickly as she can. Seemingly without thinking, he raises his wand and shouts,  _“Imperio!”_

Louis gasps, covering his mouth in horror as Rose stops slouching, standing there stock-still and attentive.

One of the wizards gasps too. “You’re not-”

“You’re fucking right I am,” sneers Tom. “You think I’m losing my touch? Come here,  _girl.”_

Louis feels rooted to the spot with terror as he watches Rose walk dispassionately across the street, her feet moving mechanically as her sandals clack against the ground.

“You think I’m getting soft, Rod?” Tom spits, forcefully grabbing Rose’s upper arm and yanking her toward him once she’s close enough. He starts dragging her toward the nearest alley. “Let’s go see how fucking  _soft_  I am when I’m-”

 _“No!”_  Louis shrieks, starting to run toward the group. The jeering men and the terrified girl don’t pay him any mind, though, and Louis finds himself held back by Harry Potter’s arms around his middle.

“Louis,” Harry says urgently, “Louis, it’s time to go.”

“No!” Louis yells again, fighting and clawing to get free. “Stop, they can’t -  _no!”_

Suddenly, Louis feels a sharp tugging sensation and finds the pair of them shooting up into the sky like a Snitch. He can only watch helplessly as Tom drags Rose into a dirty alleyway, and when Louis bursts from the Pensieve a second later he already has tears running down his face.

“Shh, shh,” Harry Potter is already comforting him, running soothing hands over his shoulders. “Shh, Louis, you’re alright.”

“Well, fuck,  _I_ am,” Louis chokes out, “but - oh my god, no, no-”

Chester and Rose come running into the room - well, as much as two people in their seventies can run.  “Oh, love, don’t cry,” Rose coos, giving Louis a hug as well. Harry lets him go so that Louis can hug his grandmother fully, and he does, crying into her shoulder and holding her as tightly as he can.

“Did you find out the information you needed?” he hears Chester asking Harry.

“I have a good idea of what he looks like, now, but I didn’t recognize him,” Harry replies. “It was a start, though, and we’re very grateful to you for helping us.”

That’s strange. Louis had for  _sure_  thought that Harry recognized one of the men. There are more important things to worry about, like hugging his grandmother and trying to get ahold of himself.

xxx

After Louis has calmed down and they’ve eaten brownies and had some more tea, Rose and Chester send Louis and Harry Potter off an hour later with extra plastic baggies full of brownies and a promise from Louis that he’ll try to come over for dinner next Sunday, which Louis is very pleased about.

“I don’t think we need to Floo back to the Ministry,” says Harry Potter. “I can just take you there by Side-Along Apparition.”

“Okay,” says Louis. “I have a question, though - did you lie to Chester back there, when you told him you didn’t recognize anyone in the memory?”

He sees Harry Potter frown. “Well, I - yes. But I want to have this conversation in my office, not out in the open. And you should probably be sitting down for it.”

And with that, the older wizard grabs Louis’s elbow and Disapparates, dragging Louis into the vortex and not giving him time to think about what Harry could possibly  _mean._

xxx

“Alright, spit it out,” Louis says.

They’re in Harry Potter’s office in the Ministry, and Louis is sitting down, as requested. Harry’s been pacing back and forth for almost five minutes now, looking anguished and nearly tearing his hair out, and it’s making Louis  _incredibly_  nervous.

“Merlin, I’m just - I’m just trying to figure out a gentle way to tell you.”

“Well, you’ve got me nervous now, so nothing’s going to be particularly gentle,” huffs Louis. “How about this: I  _ask_  you his name, and you say his name out loud?”

“I guess that’s as good as anything,” says Harry Potter, sitting down at his desk across from Louis and putting his head in his hands.

Fuck, what  _is_  it?

“Okay, tell me his name on the count of three,” Louis says, his palms sweating and itching. “One, two, three–”

“Tom Riddle,” Harry blurts out, looking up at Louis hesitantly. “Known better to a lot of people as - as Voldemort.”

xxx

Louis doesn’t  _realize_  he’s fainted until he opens his eyes and realizes that he’s lying on the ground with Harry Potter looming over him, shouting his name.

“No,” he chokes out as soon as he can speak. “Let me faint again, please, what the -  _fuck -_ fuck, that’s - I don’t know -  _no-”_

“At least you were sitting down,” Harry Potter says grimly, hauling Louis back up and into the chair.

Louis looks down at his shaking hands, thinks about the blood running through his veins, thinks about how a quarter of it is  _Voldemort’s_  - he has Voldemort’s  _blood_  inside him-

“I’m gonna be sick,” he mumbles for the second time in twenty-four hours, clutching at his stomach.

Harry is only just able to empty his wastebasket onto the ground and hold it under Louis’s mouth before Louis is heaving up the contents of his lunch and the however-many-dozen cups of tea he stress-drank after he came out of the Pensieve.

Once Louis is done, Harry presses a box of tissues into his hand and pulls the bin away, murmuring  _Scourgify_  to clean up the mess.  As soon as he’s wiped his mouth with a tissue and blown his nose into another, though, Louis starts to cry, because he’s a disgusting mess of a human being who can’t keep himself the  _fuck_  together and he’s  _Voldemort’s fucking grandson._

That explains everything - his temper, his sometimes-uncontrolled bursts of angry magic, the fact that he can talk to snakes, and most importantly, the reason the PC are trying to kill him. Excellent.

Really, really excellent.

“Louis?” Harry Potter is speaking to him, only making Louis cry harder.

“I’m sorry,” Louis chokes out. He’s descended from the man who  _killed Harry Potter’s parents_ , the dark wizard who orphaned him and made Harry’s life a living hell and tried to kill everyone close to him until Harry finally finished him off.

“What are you sorry for?” Harry asks.

“I’m - you must hate me now,” Louis sniffs, sobbing into his tissues. “You don’t have to - fuck, I feel awful-”

“I don’t hate you, Louis, don’t be silly,” says Harry. He’s obviously lying, which just makes Louis cry harder. “You’re not thinking straight right now, alright? I think we should try to get you back to Harry.  _Your_  Harry.”

Now that he thinks about it, Louis has never wanted to see his Harry more in his  _life._

They get a lot of strange looks on their way to the interrogation room, mostly because Louis can’t stop fucking crying and is trying to distance himself as much as possible from Harry Potter (because the older wizard probably can’t stand to even  _look_  at him) while Harry Potter is attempting to keep a comforting hand on Louis’s shoulder.

Finally, though, they reach Harry Styles, Hermione, and Draco, who are watching Ron interrogate the suspect from one side of a secret two-way mirror.

“This is fucking useless,” Hermione is ranting. “He doesn’t know anything about his own organization.”

“I think it’s quite clever,” says Draco, “that they only know each other by code-names, so they can’t reveal anything about anyone else even if they’re interrogated under Veritaserum.”

“Shut it,” snaps Hermione. She turns around, then, probably having heard Louis’s sniffle. “Oh hey, you two! Ron just administered the Veritaserum not fifteen minutes ago-”

“Lou?” Harry Styles asks, interrupting her and looking at Louis carefully. “Louis, what’s wrong?”

“Harry,” Louis chokes out, his voice still thick with tears.

Harry’s crossed the room in an instant, taking Louis into his arms. “Babe, what’s happened?”

Louis just shakes his head - he’s here now, in Harry’s presence, finally comforted, but he’s never ever  _ever_  going to tell his  _boyfriend_  that he’s Voldemort’s grandchild.

“The Archives were useless, so we went right to the source,” he hears Harry Potter saying.

“Don’t tell them anything,” Louis whimpers, shaking and burying his head in Harry’s chest.

“Louis, are you - are you sure? It’s a really big secret to carry around all by yourself,” says Harry Potter.

“Lou, what is it?” his Harry asks.

Louis just shakes his head, burrowing tighter into Harry’s embrace.

“I promise I’m still going to love you just as much no matter who your grandparents are,” Harry says soothingly, kissing the top of Louis’s head.

“No you won’t,” Louis moans unhappily.

“Yes I will,” Harry insists, sounding offended.

Louis thinks about it for a moment, listening to the melodious background noise of Ron Weasley screaming at the suspect in the next room.  _Can_ he keep a secret that big? Could he and Harry get married and live a happy life together, all the while without Harry knowing such an important, upsetting part of Louis’s heritage? What if Harry finds out later and leaves him?

“You c’n tell him,” he mumbles eventually, shutting his eyes tightly and wishing he could plug his ears as well.

“Do you mind if Hermione and Draco hear as well?” Harry Potter asks him.

Louis shakes his head, because – fuck it, whatever. Louis trusts both of them. It’s mostly  _Harry_  he’s worried about, anyway, because he’s not  _dating_ Hermione and Draco and it wouldn’t destroy him in every single possible way if either one of his professors thought less of him for it.

“Alright,” says Harry Potter. He takes a deep breath, and then: “Voldemort.”

“Oh my god,” Louis hears Harry say, feels it rumble in his chest. He doesn’t see how Hermione and Draco react, but Harry goes stock still.

Louis laughs bitterly, still folded in Harry’s arms. “Told you you’d hate me.”

“No, Lou, stop,” says Harry, sounding shaken, “it’s just - fuck, it’s a lot to take in, but you’ve - been that way your whole life, right? We just haven’t known, but you’ve been - you’ve been you. If that makes sense. So you’re still exactly the same person.”

Louis snorts derisively.

“You’re still the same person I fell in love with!” Harry insists, pulling Louis back so he can look into his eyes.  “And I don’t love you any less. I maybe love you more, even, because you have all this shit to deal with now and you’re still not falling completely fucking apart.”

“You don’t know that yet,” Louis grumbles, but he feels himself smile despite himself. “I’m a huge fucking mess right now.”

Harry leans forward to kiss his forehead.

“You’re  _my_  huge fucking mess, then,” he says happily, his lips brushing Louis’s skin as he talks. “So don’t try to push me away, I’m not gonna let you.”

Louis exhales on a shuddery breath, feeling more tears well up in his eyes. “I - thank you. Fuck, Harry, I love you so much.”

Harry embraces him again, and they stand like that for god knows how long, Harry rocking Louis ever so gently as Louis gradually stops crying.

Their peace is shattered, though, when the suspect in the next room begins to laugh maniacally. 

“Fucking right I did!” he shouts in response to something Ron had asked him. “Killed his father m’self, now if you’d just let me finish the  _fucking_ job I can kill the boy and we won’t have to worry about the second coming of the Dark Lord!”

Louis turns, horrified, to look through the two-way mirror. His blood runs cold.

“Second coming of the Dark Lord?” asks Ron, frowning. The five of them in the observation room are gravitating, fascinated and terrified, toward the mirror like moths to a flame.

 _“Yes,_ you moron! There are dozens of Neo-Death Eaters now, even  _hundreds,_  maybe! And you can bet there’ll be a lot more joining if they ever manage to resurrect his dead arse. We have to stop them before they bring the bastard back to life and get us all killed, now if you’d just let me  _go_  we can-”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ron growls at him. The man falls silent. He looks to be in his mid-fifties, with a bald patch on top of his head and thick, bushy eyebrows. “I’m going to ask you a question and I want a straight answer. When and why did you kill Edward Austin?”

Louis can’t believe what he’s hearing. He’s never felt worse in his life, knowing his “absent” father was really just  _murdered,_ and that includes approximately ten minutes ago when he found out he was related to Voldemort.

The man laughs maniacally, clearly hyped-up on Veritaserum. “We killed him when the Dark Lord was first rising to power, right at the beginning of the nineties, because we knew even then that this guy was  _bad fucking news_  and that it might run in the family. There were lives on the line, mate, and it didn’t pay to take chances-”

“Don’t call me  _mate,”_  Ron spits at him. “How did you know he was related to You-Kn- er, Voldemort?”

“We had a spy sneak into the Archives under Polyjuice Potion,” says the man. “He went through all the Classified files ‘til he found the people we were looking for.”

Does that mean they impersonated the ministry official who’s in charge of the archives? Out of all the stupid things he could dwell on, Louis wonders wildly how they managed to get the man’s hair.

“People? You mean there were others?” Ron asks.

“You don’t even  _know_ , mate,” the man laughs. “A lot of the murders that people thought were the work of the Dark Lord back in the early nineties was actually just  _us_ protectin’ our arses. C’n you blame us?”

“You’re disgusting,” Ron says, his lip curling. “You say you  _personally_  killed the boy’s father?”

“Bit of an accident, that one was,” says the man, chuckling a little. Louis feels sick again, but there’s nothing left in his stomach to throw up. “I was sittin’ in the Leaky Cauldron on a Sunday morning having a cuppa, minding my own business, as you do, when in walks this bloke who’s an  _exact_ match for Edward Austin’s picture in his Ministry file. The guy behind the counter seemed to know him - he called him ‘Ed,’ so I  _knew_  then that this was the guy we were looking for. He’d been eluding us for quite some time, and I realized why when the waiter asked him, ‘How’s that Muggle girl you’ve been seeing, Ed?’”

 _Louis’s mum,_ he realizes, feeling dizzy.

“And he said, I remember it like it was yesterday, ‘Popped the question last night, and I’m gonna tell her I’m a wizard today, wish me luck,’ all giddy-like, and the whole fuckin’ restaurant congratulated him on it, too,” the man continues. “I realized he’d been spending a lot of time with his lady-friend in Muggle London and that’s why we hadn’t been able to find him. Anyway, I already had my wand out and ready, and I jus’ had to wait so he could buy a couple of donuts, probably to take back to the missus. When he left the Leaky Cauldron, he took a side road, and I shot ‘im in the back with the Killing Curse, simple as that.”

Louis claps a hand over his mouth; all five of them do. That’s literally the  _worst_  thing Louis has ever heard. No.  _No._

“You sick fuck,” Ron spits at him, saying what they’re undoubtedly all feeling. “He never did anything to you. And now you’re trying to kill his son, too, I can’t  _believe_  this. How did you even find out that Edward Austin  _had_  a son?”

“Well, I didn’t think anything of the Muggle girl he’d said he was with - until this summer, that is, when the Neo-Death Eaters started really going at it, like they’d found out a huge fuckin’ secret. We’d been off the grid for years, but it was a threat again, y’know, so we got the PC back together.  We had one of our own pretend to want to join their ranks, and once he was accepted into the inner circle he found out that Voldemort had a  _living relative_ we hadn’t even known about, and that it was the Tomlinson boy.”

“How did  _they_  know?” asks Ron, sounding confused.

“Dunno,” says the man, and he must be telling the truth.  “They were mum on that, unfortunately.”

Ron stares at him hard for a couple more seconds then exits the room without saying another word, slamming the door behind him. A few moments later he bursts into their observation area, “‘Mione, did you hear that, can you fuckin’ believe-”

Ron stops short, taking in the sight of their little group - the sight of  _Louis,_ who’s heard everything and who feels like he’s about to implode with how much he doesn’t want to know  _any of this._

Ron sums it up accurately with, “Well, shit.”

xxx

Louis feels numb when he and Harry return to Hogwarts several hours later. He isn’t crying any more, but he doesn’t feel like he’s ever going to be able to smile again, either. The two of them trudge down to the dungeons, Harry with a tight grip on Louis’s hand that’s the only small measure of comfort Louis has right now. They don’t say anything, but Louis doesn’t feel as nervous anymore that Harry’s going to up and leave him.

On the way to the Slytherin common room, they pass Tom Parker.

“Hey, guys! Where’ve you been, I haven’t seen you all day,” he says brightly.

Harry just glares at him while Louis, too tired to be anything but minimally civil, says, “We took a super-fun vacation to the Ministry of Magic.”

Tom laughs, taking it as a joke like Louis had hoped he would. “You’re so funny, Louis! You know, my dad used to work as Head of History in the Ministry.”

“Oh, really,” says Louis tiredly, not giving a single fuck.

“Yeah, he just retired a couple months ago,” Tom says proudly. “Now all he does is play golf and drink Guinness, from what I understand.”

Louis wishes he had a father who played golf and drank Guinness, not one who’s dead for no fucking reason, but. You can’t have it all, apparently.

“Must be fun,” he says. “Listen, Tom, I’m pretty tired-”

“Oh, that’s fine, that’s fine!” says Tom. “I was just off to the Owlery, anyway, I’ll let you go on your way.”

“Thank fuck,” Harry murmurs as Tom finally lets them go.

Louis sighs. “He’s just trying to be nice, Harry.”

Harry rolls his eyes.

“I want to see Zayn, I think,” Louis decides suddenly, slightly more alert after having been forced to have somewhat of a conversation. Yeah, that’d be really ace, actually. He misses Zayn.

“You sure? I thought you said you were tired,” says Harry, rubbing at his eyes.

Louis shrugs. “Tired can wait.”

They turn around and trudge up the long flights of stairs to Zayn’s common room.

“Maybe my dad and Tom’s dad could’ve been golfing buddies in a parallel universe where no one killed him,” Louis jokes dryly as they approach Zayn’s common room portrait. The Auror sees them and waves, prancing off to go alert Zayn of their presence.

“It’s not a fucking joke, Lou,” says Harry.

Louis turns on him. “Well, I - I fucking  _know_ it’s not Harry, it’s  _my_ father who’s the dead one here, not anyone else’s, okay?”

“I just wish you’d learn how to deal with things instead of just making jokes of them,” says Harry, looking at him sadly.

“Fuck you,” Louis snaps. “I don’t - that’s the only wayI know, for fuck’s sake, what else am I supposed to do? Talk about my  _feelings_  with you?”

Harry rolls his eyes.  “It’s okay if you want to do that, you know.”

“Fuck you,” Louis says again, this time with more venom. “I don’t _need_  to talk about anything with you. I don’t  _need_  you Harry, okay, I’m fine just - just having you.”

“I wish you’d  _listen_ to yourself,” Harry growls, pushing him up against the stone wall next to the empty portrait. “Sometimes you sound so bloody-”

“I do!” Louis yells, pushing at Harry’s chest ineffectively. Why is Harry being such an  _arse?_ “I do listen to myself all the bloody time, and I’m an idiot! I’m shit, okay? I get it, you don’t have to fucking  _tell_  me. I get it.”

“Don’t say that,” Harry says sternly.

“What the fuck am I supposed to say, then?” Louis explodes, pushing at Harry again. “Tell me, okay, because I don’t - I don’t fucking  _know,_ I don’t know what to say, I don’t know when everything got so shitty, I don’t know what’s going on, and I need you to - fuck, I need you to help me.”

Harry grins at him, then, like that’s what he was waiting for Louis to say.

Oh, for  _fuck’s_  sake-

“Shut the fuck up,” Louis says, even though Harry hasn’t said anything. “I don’t - Harry.” He feels all the fight drain out of him. “Harry, I can’t do this alone. I don’t know why any of this is happening to me.”

Harry presses their lips together instead of responding, then, only pulls off just enough to say, “I don’t either, but I’ll be here,” joining their lips together again and pressing Louis against the wall.

It’s stupid and Louis hates it, except it’s -  _not,_ it’s grounding in a way that he hadn’t realized he’d needed until right this second. Only Harry can do this to him, really, no one else can even come close - no one else is his rock, but Harry  _is,_ Harry’s his - his fucking  _anchor_  in the mega-shitstorm that is his life right now.

Louis melts into the kiss, then, cupping both sides of Harry’s face, and he may or may not be crying again, but it’s not all bad tears this time. And if Zayn happens to open his common room portrait a minute later and stand there expectantly tapping his foot waiting for them to separate, well, Zayn can wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, if you have any thoughts you can message me on tumblr at [povverbottoms](http://povverbottoms.tumblr.com). :**


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zayn talks with his teachers, the lads try to hang out in Hogsmeade, and Zayn and Liam become even more intimate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, but I'm hoping the fact that it's 17k will make up for it! Lots of smutty goodness too.  
> After May 8, when I take the MCAT, I'll be able to get the last 3 chapters out with some consistency, more than I've had these past few months. I apologize.  
> I hope you enjoy!

The second week of classes is when the coursework begins to pile up, at least for Zayn.  It’s only Monday of week two and already he has a total of five feet of parchment for various subjects due by Friday.

“It’s ‘cause you’re taking so many difficult classes,” Liam tells him whenever Zayn complains. “It’s our last term ever, babe. Most seventh-years aren’t even taking a full courseload, much less Arithmancy or Runes.”

(Zayn is, of course, taking a full courseload that includes both Arithmancy and Ancient Runes.)

“Whatever,” Zayn shrugs. “It’s only one more term of destroying myself with work, plus I won’t really have time to learn any of this stuff once I have a job.”

“Have you given any more thought to it?” Liam asks him. They’re sat in front of the fire in Zayn’s common room; Liam, who apparently has no work to do at the moment, is changing the fire different colors with his wand, and Zayn is working his way ever-so-slowly through an old text written in Runes, translating in his head as he goes. “What you’re doing after we graduate.”

Zayn shrugs again. “Definitely something with the Ministry.  I’ve taken enough classes that I’m probably qualified to apply for a bunch of different positions, I just don’t know if anyone will want me.”

“Oh, come off it,” scoffs Liam.  _“Everyone’s_ going to want you, Zayn. The teachers here love you, especially Hermione, so you’ll get really great recommendations, plus you’re, like, the smartest and most hard-working person I know.”

“Stop it,” Zayn says, hiding his blush in the old pages of his book.

“I mean it,” Liam insists, pulling the book away from Zayn’s face long enough to give him a kiss on the cheek. Zayn’s face only heats up further.

“Li,” he whispers, gazing over at his boyfriend with a smile on his face.

Liam looks exasperated.  “It’s  _true,”_  he says, finally abandoning all pretense and shoving the book out of Zayn’s hands so he can crawl into Zayn’s lap. 

“Hey, I was reading that,” Zayn protests half-heartedly, even as his hands come up to rest on Liam’s waist. 

Liam scoffs. “Hardly. You can’t read pictures, that’s stupid.”

Zayn’s about to protest when Liam presses their lips together.  _Christ,_  Liam’s been randy lately, and Zayn wasn’t complaining over Christmas hols but now sometimes he has actual  _work_  to do and  _fuck_  that’s so lame he sounds like a forty-year-old-

“Lee- _yum,”_  he groans, putting both his hands on Liam’s chest. “Don’t you have work to do? Shouldn’t you be training?”

Liam’s been training for hours every day ever since he decided he wanted to play Quidditch professionally after Hogwarts. “Already worked out today,” Liam murmurs against Zayn’s lips. “M’feeling a bit tense, actually. Thought you might be able to help.”

He grinds down just the tiniest bit in Zayn’s lap, enough to make Zayn’s breath stutter as he feels how Liam’s starting to get hard. Zayn can feel whatever other resistance he had to offer melt away, and the next second he’s gripping Liam tighter around the waist and pulling him back in close, joining their mouths once more.

Liam’s lips quirk up in a smile and one of his hands comes up to run through Zayn’s hair, tugging on it on the crown and making Zayn groan. He bites at Liam’s lower lip and feels the other boy shudder, and Zayn takes advantage of Liam’s parted lips to slip his tongue inside. Liam’s started to move on his lap, shifting his hips back and forth and rubbing himself off against Zayn’s flies, and it’s causing Zayn to quickly harden as well inside his trousers.

As he licks deeper into Liam’s mouth and tilts his head to get a better angle, Zayn wonders if today’s going to be the day – if this is the day he and Liam are finally going to  _do_  it.  The various ways they  _have_  been getting each other off have been absolutely amazing, but Zayn knows that when they finally have actual sex it’s going to be so much more intimate and lovely, and he keeps picturing the look on Liam’s face, how he’s going to look so lost and overwhelmed and happy all at the same time-

“Well well  _well,_ what have we here?”

Liam pitches himself off of Zayn’s lap at the sound of Perrie’s voice, and Zayn turns around to peer over the back of the couch in dismay as he sees Jesy, Leigh-Anne, and Jade file in after her, flooding Zayn and Perrie’s shared common room with people when moments before it had just been Liam and Zayn.

Liam quickly grabs a throw pillow from the couch and places it square on his lap, his cheeks bright  _bright_  red as Jesy flops into an armchair across from them.

“Having a nice Monday, then?” she asks, nodding at Zayn, who’s still too stunned to move. They haven’t gotten  _actually_  interrupted in ages, and he’d gotten so distracted thinking about what it might be like to actually be  _inside_  Liam – or have Liam inside him – that he’d forgotten to keep his guard up, forgotten they were in the common room.

“Sure,” Zayn stammers out, folding his hands primly over his own lap.

Jade takes a seat on one of the couches, and she’s the only one of the four girls not wearing a lecherous smirk. Maybe she hadn’t seen them; she was the last one in. “Oh, are you working on Runes then, Zayn?” she asks, indicating the now-crumpled textbook wedged under Zayn’s thigh.

“Sure,” Zayn repeats, running a hand through his hair and trying to pat it back in place.

“Not all he was working on,” Leigh-Anne whispers to Perrie, who cackles.

“Do you understand that bit about flowering plants and moon cycles?” Jade continues. She’s either completely oblivious or being  _extremely_  nice and giving Zayn an out. “It’s been giving me trouble all day.”

“I was actually, um, I think I was just getting to that when you came in,” says Zayn, pulling the book out from underneath his thigh. He un-creases the crinkled pages while he tries to sort his head out. “Like, right here–”

“Ugh, bo-ring,” Jesy yawns, getting up from the armchair. “If you lot are working on this I’d just as soon take a nap in Pezza’s room.”

Perrie seems to agree, making sure to get in an extra wink at Zayn before following Jesy upstairs.

That just leaves Leigh, Jade, Zayn, and Liam.

“I’m – I’m actually going to go, um, jog around the pitch a few more times,” says Liam, standing up awkwardly and maneuvering around the couch with the pillow still clutched firmly in front of him. “For, uh, Quidditch. Right. Training. See you at dinner, babe.”

The pillow hits Zayn in the back in the head after Liam throws it behind himself and subsequently begins a brisk jog out of the room.

Zayn narrows his eyes at Leigh-Anne, who’s barely holding in her laughter. “Thanks a  _lot.”_

“Not my fault you can’t keep it in your pants, sweets,” she says, wriggling in between Zayn and the armchair of the couch. “You’ve got your own room just upstairs.  Now, did you say you were doing Runes? ‘Cause I’m feeling way out of my depth in that class, I’ll be honest.”

Zayn groans quietly, trying to re-focus on the symbols and make sense of them when the rest of his body and most of his mind is still stuck on Liam in his lap, warm and squirming on top of him, sucking on his tongue and gagging for it-

_“Zayn.”_

“What?”

_“Focus.”_

Zayn winces. He wonders if it’s obvious to everyone else in the room that there’s a large part of his brain exclusively dedicated to thinking about Liam naked at all times. “Sorry.”

And so he settles in for a depressing afternoon of attempting to translate ancient symbols, almost every one of which seems to be up for interpretation, while all he really wants to do is bring Liam back up here and fuck him til neither of them can move.  Zayn has no problem being patient and waiting for Liam to decide he’s ready to take the next step – and, although he hopes it’s a small chance, Zayn knows there’s a chance Liam isn’t  _ever_  going to want to have actual penetrative sex, and the worst part is he’s so bloody  _gone_  for Liam at this point that he doesn’t even think he would be too upset – but  _Christ,_ the waiting is  _killing_  him.

xxx

For Zayn’s seventh-year apprenticeship this week, Hermione has Zayn help mark first-year Transfiguration essays. Zayn hopes he isn’t being too harsh when he marks down for trivial misspellings, but hey,  _he_  never made spelling mistakes when he was a first-year.

Hermione’s doing the same across from him, but she keeps taking breaks from her work to put her head in her hands.

“Are you alright?” Zayn asks her eventually. He tries to keep his voice gentle.

Hermione jolts, sitting upright again. “What? Sorry.”

“You seem a bit distracted,” Zayn prompts.

“I’m glad that’s what it looked like,” grumbles Hermione. “I’ve been falling asleep sitting up all day long, it’s been  _awful.”_

“You were  _asleep?”_  Zayn asks in wonder. His professor nods. “I wouldn’t have guessed, you just looked like you were thinking really hard. No head-nodding or anything.”

Hermione shrugs. “Years of practice, I guess.”

Zayn nods, and the two of them return to grading until Hermione falls asleep again.

Once she jolts awake, Zayn asks tentatively, “Is everything… alright? With – everything?”

_Excellent job, Malik. Extremely eloquent._

Hermione laughs. “No, everything’s fine, I just – I’ve had a couple of late nights this week because Ron’s been putting in really long hours at the Ministry and I’ve tried to wait til he gets home to have dinner so we can eat together, but at that point the kids are already in bed and the two of us are falling asleep right at the table.  It’s a bit of a disaster.”

Zayn laughs.

“He just won’t quit, though,” Hermione says, shaking her head as she scribbles something in the margins of the essay she’s marking.  “Keeps trying to find out more and more about these  _stupid_  neo-Death Eaters and how they know what they know.”

“And he hasn’t found anything?” Zayn asks.

Hermione shakes her head. “He’d tell Louis first thing if he did, so I imagine you would’ve already heard about it.”

Zayn nods. He remembers last Sunday night, when Louis had dropped a bomb in the middle of Zayn’s common room and revealed his relation to You-Know-Who, plus the fact that Harry had gotten _poisoned_ by the PC on their first fucking date. It had shaken Zayn up a bit, and he still can’t really reconcile the  _idea_  of You-Know-Who being Louis’s grandfather with the Louis he knows and loves, but Zayn supposes he doesn’t really have to reconcile anything, since it doesn’t change anything about the Louis he knows and loves. Or something.

“But he’s getting  _nowhere_  with it, since the PC all use code-names and the one Ron caught’s been pumped so full of Veritaserum that it doesn’t affect him anymore,” Hermione continues. “They have to wait for him to detox so they can re-administer. How  _ridiculous_  is that?”

“Very,” Zayn says sympathetically, only realizing now how  _tired_  Hermione really does look.  “Are you done for the day after this, then?”

Hermione nods wearily, brushing some hair out of her face with her fingers.

“You can – I can finish up here if you want to head home and take a nap or something,” Zayn offers. “If that’s okay.”

Hermione looks at him. “Do I look that awful?”

Zayn laughs. “No, no, promise! You’re just – if you’re falling asleep here, you might as well do it at home.”

“I knew there was a reason I picked you as my apprentice,” Hermione says, smiling at him. “Besides the fact that you’re quite possibly the brightest student I’ve ever had.”

Zayn smiles down at the parchment in front of him, trying not to blush. He doesn’t take compliments very well, never has – he just doesn’t know what to  _say_  to them.

“If you’re alright here, though, I just might,” continues Hermione, yawning. “Can you  _imagine_  if my first-years knew I was leaving their essays in the hands of another student?”

“They’ll probably expect me to mark more leniently,” Zayn points out. “They’d be thrilled.”

“Til they get their essays back, that is, and find out you’re even more ruthless than I am,” jokes Hermione. She stands up and gathers up a few books and her wand.

Zayn laughs with her. “Too true.”

“Thanks for doing this again, Zayn. I really appreciate it.”

“Not a problem,” says Zayn, pulling Hermione’s stack of essays toward his own and piling them on top of each other.

His professor gives him one last smile and then heads for the door, her low heels clacking smartly on the ground.

Zayn grades in silence for another fifteen minutes, trying to work through the essays as fast as possible considering how many of them keep misspelling “transformative.” Despicable, really. Once he’s about halfway through the pile, the door to Hermione’s office opens once again and Professor Malfoy walks in.

“You’re not Hermione,” he comments.

“Nope,” Zayn agrees. “She’s been tired all week because Mr. Weasley’s been coming home late, so I told her I could grade these while she went home and took a nap.”

 _“Weasley,”_  Malfoy scoffs, pulling up a chair and sitting down across from Zayn. “Going to make a bunch of first-years cry, I presume?”

Zayn laughs. “I hope not.”

He grades in silence for another couple of minutes, all the while noticing that Malfoy isn’t leaving, just sitting across from him and staring off into space. Zayn doesn’t want to say anything, though, so he just keeps striking through things with his bright red ink and scribbling notes and suggestions in the margins.

Finally, Malfoy says, “Have you talked to Louis lately?”

Zayn puts his quill down. He remembers what Louis said on Sunday, that Malfoy was there at the hospital and there at the Ministry. “Every day, yeah.”

“Is he – how’s he doing?”

Zayn shrugs. “Pretty well, actually.  He’s a bit quieter, but he’s holding up, making jokes about it. You know how Louis is.”

Malfoy nods. “I do.”

Zayn keeps his head down for the next couple of minutes and tries to continue to grade the essays while Malfoy fidgets with another quill, plucks each piece of feather off one by one.

“Has he told you everything that happened last weekend?” Malfoy asks eventually.

“Think so,” says Zayn. “There’s two different groups of people trying to kill him for different reasons, both of which have to do with the fact that You-Know-Who’s his granddad by blood.”

“Sounds about right,” says Malfoy. “He’s… I’m not sure how connected any of you are to the outside world right now, but there’s a veritable media shitstorm brewing.”

Zayn puts his quill down. He’d worried this would happen, but he stopped subscribing to the  _Daily Prophet_  years ago.  “Do they know all the details?”

Malfoy shakes his head. “They don’t even know it’s Louis yet. And I don’t want to alarm anyone about anything, it’s just – next Saturday’s a Hogsmeade weekend, right?”

“Yeah,” says Zayn. “Finally, thank fuck.”

Malfoy chuckles.  “Just… keep an eye out for him, alright, Zayn? Like you said, there’s two groups of people trying to kill him, plus an entire public who’s going to tear into him if they ever find out who was with the boy who got poisoned at Madam Puddifoot’s. It’s all anyone’s been talking about.”

“Noted,” says Zayn. He looks up at his Potions professor, who appears stuck between bolting from the room and spilling his guts and all his _feelings_ out. Zayn understands, he thinks. He and Malfoy are on the same page when it comes to caring about Louis. After another couple seconds, Zayn puts Malfoy out of his misery and says, “No, really, I – I get it, mate. Me too.”

“Excellent,” says Malfoy. “Thought I was going to have to get sappy for a second there.”

Zayn laughs. “No need, no need. I’ll look after him, though. And you know Harry will too.”

Malfoy nods. “Course. Just – take a big group with you when you go to Hogsmeade, okay? Safety in numbers, and all that. And don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”

“They still haven’t found out how the PC bloke knew Louis was at Madam Puddifoot’s?” asks Zayn.

Malfoy shakes his head. “Weasley’s working on it, or so he says, but we all know he’s worthless, so.”

Zayn smirks. “You really don’t like him, do you?”

“Some old habits die hard,” says Malfoy. He looks at his watch. “Anyway, don’t let me keep you here longer than you need to be. As you were, Malik.”

With that, he gets up abruptly from his seat, tossing the ripped quill back onto Hermione’s desk and throwing a little wave behind him as he leaves.

Zayn looks back at his stack of essays and groans, wondering if there’s any possibility he’s going to finish before dinner and bemoaning the fact that he’s a nice person. Maybe Liam will be the excellent boyfriend Zayn knows he is and bring him something from the Great Hall to eat here. Before he dives back into the essays, Zayn takes out his wand to cast his Patronus and ask Liam to do exactly that. 

xxx

“You alright, mate? You’ve barely touched your dinner,” Niall mumbles through a mouthful of roast.

Across the table, Louis shrugs. “Already had dinner at my grandparents’ house. I just got back, actually. And my grandmum can cook, let me tell you. She sent me home with a whole leftover banoffee pie.”

This weekend had gone by fast – too fast. Yesterday, Hermione had taken Zayn and a few other interested students on a Ministry-sanctioned tour of their Curse-Breaking offices (at least, the parts they were allowed to see). That had taken up almost his entire Saturday, and Liam had seemed tired last night from some new training circuit he’d attempted while Zayn was gone, so he and Zayn had gone to bed rather early. Zayn usually relies on the weekends to let off a little steam and keep him sane, but this weekend didn’t really do it for him, if he’s being honest. There’s always next weekend, though – they’ll get to go into Hogsmeade and have a few drinks, so that’s almost guaranteed to be fun.

“Where do they live, again?” asks Liam.

“Sheffield,” says Louis. “McGonagall even let me use her Floo network to get there after I asked for permission to leave the school. She’s got a heart in there somewhere, turns out.”

“Since when do you ask permission to leave the school?” Zayn asks, laughing. “You could’ve just used my Floo, you know.”

Louis shrugs. “Wanted to make sure someone important knew where I was, y’know, in case – yeah.”

They all nod sadly, all understanding what Louis is implying. Despite Malfoy’s warnings to Zayn to protect Louis from the media, Louis has been taking matters into his own hands over the past couple days and informing many of his close friends about the poisoning incident and what really happened, almost pre-emptively, and that information includes – for a select few friends only – his true heritage.  Harry slides even closer to Louis and wrap an arm around him. Zayn frowns and takes a sip of his apple juice for something to do, not liking the suddenly sober atmosphere.

“How was your weekend, Niall?” Louis asks quickly, clearly trying to move the conversation along.

“Top notch,” says Niall. He takes a sip of his pumpkin juice. “Got laid last night.”

“Nice!” says Harry, leaning across Louis to high-five him. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

“Can’t tell you that,” says Niall, “sorry. She wants me to keep it a secret for now.”

“So it’s an ongoing thing?” asks Zayn.

Niall nods. “Yesterday was, like, the fourth or fifth time, I think.”

 _“Niall!_  Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” asks Liam.

“A gentlemen never tells,” says Niall sagely.

“Oh, come off it,” Louis teases him, punching him in the shoulder. “You’re no gentlemen.”

“Innit?” says Niall, wiggling his eyebrows.

“A toast!” exclaims Louis, holding up his goblet of pumpkin juice. “To Niall’s bedroom escapades and my nan’s banoffee pie. Excellent weekend, this.”

The five of them clink their goblets together, laughing all the while. 

“Are you lads still up for going to Hogsmeade next Saturday?” Zayn asks once they’ve set their drinks down.

Niall groans. “Am I at least allowed to  _acknowledge_  that I’ll be the fifth wheel this time?”

“Absolutely,” says Harry with a smirk. He gives Louis a kiss on the cheek and Louis positively beams.

“Fine,” grumbles Niall. “We have to get through a whole week of classes, though. Did I tell you guys Sprout assigned six  _feet_  of parchment due by Thursday?”

“We’re in the same class, Ni,” Liam reminds him.

Niall shrugs. “I’m telling you, it’s just getting worse and worse as we get closer to graduating.”

“They have to let up at some point,” Harry points out.

“Let’s hope so,” says Niall. “Otherwise I’m getting even more pissed at the Hog’s Head than I usually do.”

xxx

Zayn doesn’t see much of any of the boys besides Liam during the following week. Niall’s taken to eating with Ed a lot of the time, and Harry and Louis have been even more attached at the hip than usual lately, so Zayn mostly spends his non-studying time with Liam and his Ravenclaw friends.  Most of his time is, though, taken up by coursework, and Zayn finds himself agreeing with Niall’s sentiment that school is just getting worse and worse the closer they get to graduating.

Soon enough, though, he’s fought tooth and nail through another school week and finds himself waking up without an alarm on Saturday morning.  He can tell from the position of the sun shining through his gold curtains that it’s well before noon, but for once Zayn doesn’t mind. It probably has something to do with the fact that Liam is under the covers with Zayn’s cock halfway down his throat.

“Fuck,” Zayn groans, his hips bucking up as he blinks his eyes open slowly.

He feels Liam’s hand tighten on his hip, his fingers digging into Zayn’s skin.  Zayn isn’t sure how long Liam’s been at this, but he’s rock hard and he feels close already,  _fuck._

“Feels good,” he murmurs, shifting a bit so he can run his fingers through Liam’s short hair, tugging at the longest strands.

Liam pulls off, pursing his lips to suck lightly around the head of Zayn’s cock until Zayn moans and jerks his hips up again.  “Morning, love.”

Zayn’s heart does a stupid little flip in his chest when he hears how deep and raspy Liam’s wrecked morning voice sounds.  He looks down and meets Liam’s eyes, grinning at his boyfriend as he thumbs over Liam’s swollen lower lip. 

“Took you long enough to wake up,” says Liam, his cheeks pink.

Zayn laughs, but it turns into a moan when Liam thumbs over the tip of his cock.  “What can I say, I – f- _fuck,_  I like my sleep.”

Liam licks a slow stripe up the shaft, holding eye contact all the while, and if Zayn wasn’t already laying down he’s sure his knees would give out.  “Even more than this?”

“No,” Zayn’s quick to breathe, hissing out another breath when Liam sucks him back down. His lips are this obscene shade of pink stretched around Zayn’s cock, and his eyes are closed in concentration the way they always are when Liam really, really wants something.

It doesn’t take long at all for Zayn to come after that, and he’s barely done shooting down Liam’s throat when Liam is pulling off frantically, getting the last pulse all over his lips.  He sits up onto his knees and gives himself a few tugs, and Zayn can see that his cock is rock hard and straining, wet at the tip even from here.

“Let me,” Zayn croaks out, his mind still fuzzy and blank from his orgasm.

Liam nods frantically, leaning forward for a kiss as Zayn takes him in hand. Zayn can taste his own come on Liam’s lips, and they lick frantically into each other’s mouths as Liam whines and gasps and snaps his hips forward.

“Can you – fingers–” Liam mumbles eventually, his cock leaking precome all over Zayn’s hand.

“Yeah,” breathes Zayn, “yeah, course, babe.”

They flip over without even having to talk about it, having done this enough times already over the past few weeks. Liam loves coming with Zayn’s fingers inside him, even if he hasn’t express any interest in having anything  _else_  inside him, and Zayn is completely addicted to the way Liam’s body stretches and spasms around his fingers when he comes.

His fingers are already a bit wet from Liam’s cock, but Zayn spits on two of his digits for good measure before petting around Liam’s hole and pushing one inside. Liam groans, and Zayn watches his heavy cock jump on his belly. 

“Close,” Liam croaks out, his voice still hoarse from taking Zayn’s cock down his throat.  “God, I’m – fuck, I love you–”

Zayn bites his lip and quickly works another finger inside the tight clutch of Liam’s arse, wraps his other hand around Liam’s cock and kisses the inside of his thigh before he does something stupid like propose marriage.

“Wanna see you,” Zayn whispers, jerking Liam’s cock faster. “Wanna see you come all over yourself, Li, love when you–”

Liam cuts him off with a cry, his back arching high off the bed as his cock twitches in Zayn’s hand and shoots all over his stomach.  Zayn stares, mesmerized, and watches the veins in Liam’s neck stand out as he throws his head back and whimpers. If he hadn’t just had his brains sucked out through his dick, Zayn would definitely be getting hard again, because there’s no hotter sight in the  _world_  than Liam coming. 

Shit, he’s so far  _gone_  it’s embarrassing.  Zayn didn’t think he’d ever feel this way about anyone, much less before he’s even graduated Hogwarts. When did this  _happen?_

Liam’s smiling down at him, like he understands the look that’s on Zayn’s face.  Zayn draws his fingers out slowly, feeling Liam’s body try to keep him inside, and watches greedily as Liam’s eyes slip shut and he groans softly.  Zayn goes for his wand to clean them both up, rooting around under the covers with his clean hand, but comes up with nothing.

“Have you seen my wand, babe?” he asks Liam, whose eyes are still closed.

Liam gives a half-grunt in response, shrugging lazily and stretching. Zayn looks around some more, sitting up to feel under both of the pillows before sitting back on his heels and frowning.  Maybe it’s in the common room.

Well, he can’t very well get dressed with only one clean hand, can he?

“Oi!” Liam protests, his eyes flying open after Zayn wipes his fingers on Liam’s thigh.

“Sorry,” laughs Zayn, “have to find my wand. Clean yourself off, you lump.”

Liam narrows his eyes at him, but the intimidating effect is offset by the giddy smile he’s also wearing. 

Zayn pads into his bathroom, washing his hands thoroughly before fixing his hair into a somewhat-presentable state.  After pulling on a soft pair of trackies, he tiptoes downstairs, trying to be quiet even though it’s highly unlikely that Perrie is awake yet given the particularly loud and enthusiastic hook-up she’d had last night that had kept Liam and Zayn up for hours.

He wonders if the bloke slept over, or if it was clearly a one-off.  Either way, the whole school’s probably going to know about it soon, considering that there are  _no_  secrets in Hogwarts  _ever._

After a couple minutes, Zayn finally finds his wand wedged in between two of the cushions of their largest and squishiest couch.  He must’ve left it down here last night once he and Liam had finally gone up to bed.

Zayn’s just about to head back upstairs when he hears muffled footsteps coming from Perrie’s stairwell, and then he has to wonder if it’s Perrie or if it’s her mystery lay.  Either way, Zayn specializes in making situations as awkward as possible, especially considering Perrie has been giving him and Liam shit for  _months,_ so he’s planning on really enjoyiong this.  

What he isn’t expecting is for _Niall_ to appear at the foot of the stairwell. 

Niall looks as surprised to see Zayn as Zayn is to see him, and they stare at each other, shocked.

 _“Niall?”_  Zayn asks eventually, after neither of them has said anything for a minute.

“Hey, Zayn,” says Niall, scratching at the back of his neck awkwardly.

Neither of them say anything for another minute.

“So, Perrie, huh?” Zayn asks, finally stating the obvious.

Niall laughs. “Yeah, I – yeah.”

“Good for you,” says Zayn. “She’s the girl you’ve been seeing, then?”

“Yep,” says Niall.  “I – she didn’t want me to tell you yet, because she said you’d give her shit for it.”

“She’s got that right,” Zayn huffs. “She teases me and Liam every possible opportunity she gets.  Of  _course_  I’m going to make your lives miserable.”

Niall groans, covering his face with his hands. “She’s gonna kill me.”

Zayn laughs.  Then, he remembers something else. “Hey, mate, she’s not – you’re not just hooking up with her to, um, as a rebound or anything, right?”

Hey, she  _does_  look a bit like Ellie. Can’t blame Zayn for asking, especially because he’s rather fond of Perrie and doesn’t want her to get invested if the two of them aren’t on the same page.

Niall’s shoulders sag a bit. “Nah, mate.  Had Barbara for that.”

Zayn’s eyebrows fly up. “You hooked up with  _Barbara_ too?”

“Only once!” Niall says, holding his hands up. “The night after Ellie broke things off.”

“Damn, you get around,” says Zayn, nodding approvingly. “Who knew?”

Niall laughs. “Everyone’s been too focused on Louis speaking Parseltongue to give a shit about what anyone does with their dick, mate.”

“Too true,” says Zayn. “Anyway, I’ll – I’ll, um, I’ll let you be on your way, then.”

Niall nods, fidgeting slightly. Merlin, why is this so  _awkward?_

“We’re still going to Hogsmeade this afternoon, right?” Zayn continues. “What time is it, anyway?”

“Yeah, wouldn’t miss it.  I think it’s half past ten,” says Niall, looking at his watch. “Yep, it’s – yeah. Anyway, I’ll – see you at one, then?”

“Yep,” says Zayn. “Awesome. Don’t fuck with Perrie’s heart, and all that.”

“Thanks, Mr. Edwards,” says Niall, rolling his eyes and making them both laugh. He exits with his dignity only mostly shattered, and Zayn stares after him and figures that Niall is far from the worst person Perrie could be hooking up with. He cares about her, is all.

Zayn drags himself back upstairs, wand in hand.

“Who were you talking to downstairs?” Liam asks him sleepily. “Thought I heard voices.”

“Niall,” says Zayn. He flops back down on the bed, crawling on top of Liam and snuggling up close.

Liam doesn’t respond for a minute, just strokes up and down Zayn’s back contentedly.

A few minutes later, it seems to hit him. “Wait,  _what?”_

xxx

A few hours later, Zayn and Liam have showered and dressed in multiple layers to brace themselves against the cold outside. It’s the last weekend of January, after all, and this time they’re actually going to be walking to Hogsmeade aboveground with the rest of the school instead of using one of the secret passages they’d discovered on the Marauder’s Map.  They have to check in with Professor Sprout in the main courtyard at one o’clock, and that’s where they’re planning on meeting up with Niall, Louis, and Harry.

“I still can’t believe Niall and Perrie are a thing now,” says Liam as the two of them walk down a staircase.

Zayn laughs. “I’ve been debating whether I should tell the others or not. ‘Cause I wanna be able to give him maximum shit for it, but Lou is going to be  _ruthless.”_

“Think of all the times Niall’s given  _me_  shit, though,” Liam points out.  He threads his fingers through Zayn’s and swings their hands back and forth.  “Next thing you know him and Perrie’ll be holding hands like us and I’ll be teasing  _him_ about wearing the same jumper two days in a row.”

“Those were the days,” jokes Zayn.

“What, when I re-wore clothes?”

“No, when you hadn’t moved half your wardrobe into my closet.”

Liam gives him a playful shove and Zayn snickers. “Your closet’s  _plenty_  big for the both of us, babe. Even with your dozens of shoes.”

Zayn narrows his eyes.  “What’s wrong with my shoes?”

Liam laughs even louder and tightens his grip on Zayn’s hand, and before Zayn can respond, they’ve reached the courtyard and are suddenly surrounded by dozens of other milling students.

“Think Louis and Harry are already here?” Zayn asks instead.

Liam shrugs. “They’re usually late to stuff, aren’t they?”

Zayn snorts. “Cause they can’t keep it in their pants for five bloody minutes, usually.”

They search the crowd and find that Louis and Harry are, indeed, already there, as is Niall.  When Niall sees them, Zayn raises an eyebrow at him and Niall’s eyes widen in fear. Oh, this is going to be  _good_. 

“Well hel _lo,_ Niall,” says Liam, sliding an arm around the suddenly-terrified blond.

Louis’s quick eyes work between them. “Something I’m missing?”

“Hello to you all too,” says Harry indignantly, brushing some hair out of his face and spluttering when his mittens make it static-y.

“Hi, Harry,” says Zayn easily, sliding an arm around Niall’s other shoulder.  “How’s your weekend been going?”

“Fine,” says Harry, frowning at them.  “Niall looks like he’s just wet himself, what’ve you done to him?”

“Nothing,” Niall says quickly.  “Nothing, nothing. Just… thinking of all the wonderful places we could go to today, it’s, uh – quite overwhelming, you know.”

“Right,” says Louis slowly. “We’re talking about the same Hogsmeade we’ve been going to for seven years, yes?”

Harry laughs, beaming at Louis. Just then, Sprout shouts for the group of students to be silent so that she can take attendance, and Niall takes advantage of Harry and Louis’s distraction to lean over and whispers, “I’ll buy you each a round at the Hog’s Head if you just  _don’t say anything,_ okay.”

“They’re going to find out eventually,” Zayn points out.

“Pezza doesn’t want anyone to know yet,” whispers Niall.

“Oh so it’s  _Pezza_  now, then?” asks Zayn, delighted.

Niall’s cheeks and the tips of his ears turn bright red.

“Fine, fine.  I want a Fireball, though, none of that malt liquor shit,” Zayn whispers.

“Done.”

xxx

Getting into Hogsmeade and receiving the aforementioned Fireball is actually easier said than done.  Over half the Hogwarts student body makes their way along the snowy path, skipping and twirling and being generally happy at their freedom after weeks of being cooped up inside the castle.  When Niall complains about being the fifth wheel after pointing out that both of the couples traveling with him are holding hands, Zayn and Louis each take one of his arms and the five of them skip and trip over the cobblestones as a unit, pushing at each other and laughing until their sides hurt. It’s a sunny day, too, which makes it a nicer day than they’ve had in a while, even though the sun glinting off of the snow is a bit too bright for Zayn’s taste.

Immediately after reaching the little village, though, the large group of students is met by a small but fierce group of witches and wizards armed with cameras and notepads. 

“Louis? Louis Tomlinson?” they’re shouting, pushing and shoving at the students in front.

Zayn frowns, holding onto Liam and Niall tighter.

“Louis Tomlinson?”

Zayn looks over at Louis, who’s stopped in his tracks.

Up ahead, Zayn sees a student with a Hufflepuff scarf shrug and say, “He’s back there somewhere.”

Zayn balks as the reporters clamor to break through the crowd of students, who are starting to move uneasily.  He looks over at Louis, whose eyebrows are knitted together in confusion.  Before Zayn can do anything, he sees one of the reporters up ahead talking to Tom Parker, who turns around and points at Louis cheerfully.

“Shit,” Zayn bites out under his breath.

“Louis!” the reporter shouts, elbowing students out of the way to get to Louis, who’s frozen on the spot.  “Louis Tomlinson?”

“Hey–” Zayn starts, moving himself to stand in front of Louis.

“Any comment on the January 11 poisoning incident at Madam Puddifoot’s?” the woman shouts in Zayn’s face, trying to maneuver around him so she can get a clear shot of Louis with her camera.  The other reporters have noticed their spectacle and are starting to move toward their little group as well. Shit shit  _shit –_ “Is it true you poisoned Harry Styles?”

How do they know their full  _names?_  Zayn starts to panic.

“Hey, he didn’t poison me!” Harry speaks up angrily. Louis still hasn’t moved at all, but he has a death grip on Zayn’s wrist now, and Liam is starting to push forward to meet the crowd of reporters and help Zayn form some sort of barrier.

“Are  _you_  Harry Styles?” one of the other reporters asks, pushing at Liam as a Quick-Quotes Quill scribbles furiously on a bit of parchment levitating next to him.

Harry doesn’t say anything back, so he must’ve realized that speaking up was a mistake. The reporters take this silence as assent, though, and camera flashes start to blind Zayn as the reporters shout, “Is it true your heart stopped?”

“How many nights did you spend in St. Mungo’s?”

“What exactly is the  _nature_  of your relationship with Louis Tomlinson?”

“Hey,” Zayn snaps again, holding his hands up so his eyesight isn’t permanently damaged. “Hey, cut it out–”

“What’s going on?” he hears another student shout from outside the pressing, terrifying wall of reporters. It sounds like Ed, but he can’t be sure –

“Louis, can you give us a hint as to why you–”

“Harry, is it true that you–”

“The hostess sheet at Madam Puddifoot’s said that you were there with–”

 _“Enough!”_  a new voice roars. 

The crowd parts quickly, and the reporters turn their cameras to the new figure lumbering toward them – Hagrid, bless him.

“What’s the meanin’ of all this?” Hagrid asks, his voice gruff.  “Give ‘em some air, would you? They look like they can barely breathe.”

He shoos people away with his large, ham-like hands until Louis’s grip on Zayn’s hand relaxes slightly.

“There you are,” Hagrid says kindly, even though the reporters are still shouting questions and Zayn’s ears are ringing.  He pats Louis on the shoulder.  “Now y’can go for a couple o’ pints, yeah? Tom’ll keep the riffraff outside if you want.”

Louis manages a shaky smile, his paled skin flashing even whiter from the cameras. “I’m – I t-think I might go back to the castle, actually,” he mutters to Hagrid, who nods in understanding.

With that, Louis takes off, walking quickly back toward the castle and then breaking into a jog, and Harry’s face crumples before he chases after him, yelling, “Hey, love! Lou, wait up, please–”

The crowd of reporters tries to follow them, and Zayn finds himself surrounded again for several more seconds before Hagrid angrily pushes the nosy witches and wizards back.

“That’s school property behind me, that is,” he tells them, his bushy eyebrows drawn into a hard line.  “Wait ‘til McGonagall hears you were terrorizing her students. You lot should be ashamed of yourselves.”

He stands there imposingly until the reporters slink away, jotting scribbles down in their notebooks.  It doesn’t even feel good or satisfying when they leave – Zayn knows they got the story they wanted.  After that, Zayn doesn’t feel much like drinking and shopping, if he’s honest.

“That took the fun right out of everything,” Niall mutters, like he’s reading Zayn’s mind. 

“I think we should go make sure they’re okay,” says Liam. “We could hang around the castle all day with them, if they want. Hogsmeade’s boring anyway.”

“Sounds good to me,” Zayn agrees.

They walk back together, and they find Harry and Louis back in the courtyard they’d gathered in originally, sitting on one of the stone benches. Louis is resting his head on Harry’s shoulder, and Harry is stroking his fingers through Louis’s hair.

“Hey, guys,” Louis says softly once he notices Zayn, Liam, and Niall. “You didn’t have to – you could’ve gone into Hogsmeade yourselves, you know.”

His eyes are wet, but his voice doesn’t sound rough like it does after he cries.

“Nothing we haven’t seen before, like you said,” says Niall. “We could fuck around here all day, if you guys want. Get the House Elves to make us something special, play Truth or Dare around the castle, that sort of thing. I haven’t had one of those days in a while - Josh and I used to do that all the time last year before he went and got himself a girlfriend.”

He says the last part a bit bitterly, which makes Zayn laugh internally because now Niall’s got  _Perrie._

“Aww, Niall’s lonely,” Harry coos, still stroking through Louis’s hair. “We need to find you a girlfriend, Niall.   That way we can go on triple dates.”

Zayn snorts and Niall shoots him a glare.

“Or… boyfriend?” Harry asks tentatively, misinterpreting the exchange.

“No, no, I – girlfriend, definitely girlfriend,” says Niall, his cheeks pink. “Anyway, I – I’ve got loads of booze in my room, beer and harder stuff too so I can make us Fireballs and everything, but maybe we should save that for later–”

“I’ll say,” snorts Liam. “It’s not even two yet!”

“Never too early to start, Payno,” Louis proclaims, kissing Harry’s cheek lightly before hauling himself into a sitting position and then standing up from the bench.  “Maybe we should get something to eat first, though, I haven’t eaten anything all day.”

Harry stands up too, and whispers something in Louis’s ear that makes the shorter boy’s cheeks go bright red. 

Louis smirks even through his blush and replies quietly, “Yeah, well – I was talking about  _food_ , Harold.”

xxx

Eight hours later, the five of them have been on a steady diet of sweets, rolls, and alcohol, and Zayn hasn’t felt this good in a  _while._  They’d stumbled up to Zayn’s common room after the amused House Elves had shooed them out of the kitchen around eight, and they’ve been drinking themselves into a stupor ever since.  Zayn’s lost track of how many times they’ve dropped shots of Firewhiskey into mugs of Butterbeer and chugged them, but it’s definitely more than six, and he isn’t sure if he’s ever going to be able to stand up again. At least they’ve all firmly put the Hogsmeade incident behind them, especially Louis, whose mood has undergone a complete one-eighty shift since his sadness in the courtyard.

“Whose –  _hic! –_ whose turn is it?” Niall asks, poking Harry’s foot.

“I think it’s Lou’s,” Harry mumbles, turning his head so he can blow a raspberry into Louis’s neck.

Louis slaps him ineffectively and the five of them dissolve into giggles.

“Okay, truth – um – truth or dare?” Zayn asks Louis.

“Wait, before we do that, what d’you – Harry,  _stop_  that – what d’you say we kick it up a notch?” slurs Louis.

Zayn wouldn’t be opposed to that, whatever that means. He looks around him in his drunken haze and wonders why they’re all sprawled on the floor when there are several perfectly lovely couches they could be using. Oh well. Liam’s tummy is just as good as a pillow, as it turns out.

“Depends,” says Liam, and Zayn can feel the word rumble through Liam’s chest from where he’s lying on it.

“Draco and I have been making this for the, um, the guys,” Louis says, giggling.

“The guys?” asks Niall, sounding interested.

“The – you know, the guys. Those guys. The Ministry. Fuck.”

Harry bursts into laughter, and once he starts he can’t stop.

“Anyway, look, he – we each took a little vial for ourselves.  _Shhhh._ Don’t tell anyone.”

Louis whispers the last part, prompting Zayn to sit up halfway so he can see what Louis is talking about.  He’s holding a small vial in his hand with some sort of clear potion inside.

“What is that?” Zayn asks, sitting up fully. “Lou–”

“Veritaserum,” Louis whispers, his blue eyes wild and mischievous.

Liam gasps, sounding scandalized.

“Sick!” shouts Niall. “This is so much better than –  _hic! –_ than Hogsmeade, I hope you realize – c’mon, let’s do it, what are we –  _hic! –_ waiting for?”

“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” says Liam uneasily as Louis squeezes a few drops of the potion into five shot glasses, then fills them up the rest of the way with Firewhiskey.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” says Louis innocently.

They all know he doesn’t mean that, though, and as usual Liam’s the one to groan and throw his hands up and say  _fuck it, why not_  as the other four enthusiastically down their shots. Zayn loves Liam. Zayn  _looooooves_  Liam.

“How long does it take?” Zayn asks, shuddering as warmth spreads down his throat. Next to him, Liam gives a little cough as the Firewhiskey goes down. Zayn’s never had Veritaserum before, so he’s not sure what he’s supposed to feel like – it didn’t  _taste_  any different than a normal shot of Firewhiskey or anything. He kind of wants to climb into Liam’s lap. He kind of wants Liam’s dick in his mouth. It’s fine.

“Not too long,” says Louis, settling back on Harry’s lap after he’s put his shot glass down. “Someone ask me a question, I’ll try to lie.”

“What’s my favorite color?” asks Harry.

“Blue like my eyes,” Louis answers serenely, his eyes closed in content. Then, he seems to realize what he just said, and his eyes pop open.

“Wow, that really works fast,” says Harry happily.

“Merlin’s tits, I think I’m gonna puke,” complains Niall, making fake retching noises.

“Ask me something,” Liam murmurs to Zayn.

Zayn grins and turns around, finally giving into the urge to climb on top of his boyfriend so he’s straddling him.  He leans down, pressing Liam into the floor amid a flurry of wolf-whistles, and whispers, “What would you do to me if they weren’t here?”

He looks down at Liam’s face, watches a brief flash of panic pass through Liam’s eyes and watches his mouth move soundlessly for a second before Liam whispers, “I’d – oh – I’d fuck your mouth.”

Liam’s eyes go wide and he immediately claps a hand over his mouth like he didn’t mean to say that. Zayn’s whole body feels hot now and  _fuck_  he shouldn’t have asked that, Liam wants to fuck his mouth until he’s choking on it because Zayn fucking  _loves_  it –

“If you two are  _quite_  finished,” he hears Louis say, “we have a game to get back to.”

“That stuff really works,” Liam comments shakily as he sits up, Zayn still clutched in his lap. His cheeks are bright red.

“Of course it does.  _I_  made it,” Louis says indignantly.  Liam laughs.  _“Now,_ I believe someone was going to ask me Truth or Dare.”

“Well, we have to do all truth now, don’t we? No fun if we’re just wasting the Veritaserum,” says Harry, shrugging.

Louis nods. “Right you are, Harold. Who wants to do the honors?”

He grins at all of them, but it’s Niall who speaks up.

“Sorry, always wanted to know – when you and Harry, uh, fuck, who’s, um – who’s the one, y’know, taking it up the arse?”

Louis bursts out laughing, falling back to rest his head on Harry’s shoulder. “Niall.  _Niall._ You didn’t have to wait til I took Veritaserum to ask me that one.”

“It’s true,” says Zayn. He shifts in Liam’s lap so he’s facing forward, and he feels Liam’s slightly-swollen dick press against his bum. Fucking  _fuck_ fuck. “He always talks about it, you know.”

“Well no one’s told me,” says Niall, throwing his hands up.

“Fine, um – well, it’s not always the same, but I do much prefer to bottom,” Louis informs him, his mouth twisted into a smirk. “And if you’ve seen what Harry’s got down there, you wouldn’t blame me.”

The five of them burst into laughter – the Veritaserum is making them even more crass than usual.

“I get to ask you one now, Niall,” Louis declares. “I’ve got no idea  _what,_ but I’ll think of something.”

“Oooh! Ooh! I know!” Liam shouts excitedly from underneath Zayn. “Louis, you have to ask him–”

 _“No!”_  Niall roars, launching himself at Liam. Unfortunately, Zayn is seated squarely on top of him, so Niall topples the two of them over and Zayn is caught in the drunken crossfire as Liam tries to catch his breath enough to blurt out Niall’s secret.

“Don’t you  _dare,”_  Niall hisses, drunkenly wheezing and laughing as they hit at each other. Zayn busies himself trying to lick Niall’s ear to distract him from hitting Liam, but he keeps missing and licking Niall’s face instead, which only makes the three of them laugh harder as they continue to wrestle.

Niall’s just gotten his arms around the both of them and is starting to tickle Liam into submission while Zayn wheezes and kicks his legs out drunkenly when they hear the door to the common room open.  The three of them freeze, but they’re too drunk to really  _react_ beyond that, plus Zayn feels strangely comfortable sandwiched in between Liam and Niall. He chances a glance over at the other two and sees that Harry has Louis flipped over and pinned to the ground and they’re snogging apropos of nothing, continuing to do so and not caring about whoever just walked in. Honestly, you leave them alone for only a  _second –_

“Well, this is intimate,” says a female voice.

Oh,  _Perrie._ Right, of course. She lives here too.

“Perrie,” Zayn slurs happily, trying to get up to hug her and of course completely failing.

“Hi, Zayn,” she says brightly. “Liam. I’m going to assume that’s Harry and Louis over there, so who’s – oh,  _hey,_ Niall.”

“Oh  _heeey,_ Niall,” Liam imitates her, pitching his voice up an octave.

Niall makes an unhappy noise and responds by tickling Liam some more, and the three of them dissolve into giggles once again.

There’s a wet smacking sound somewhere to Zayn’s right and then he hears Louis drunkenly shout, “Perrie! What an absolutely  _lovely_  surprise!”

“I live here,” Perrie says, sounding amused. “How much have you lot had to drink, anyway?”

“Seven Fireballs,” Zayn rattles off, feeling the Veritaserum move his lips. “And some Veritaserum.”

 _“Verita–”_  Perrie starts, shocked.

Harry interrupts her. “Oh my  _god,_ Perrie, your hair looks so blonde.”

“Thanks?”

“Niall, Niall, c’mere,” Harry whispers loudly, beckoning to Niall.

“What?” Niall shouts back, still draped over Liam and Zayn.

“Niall, it’s a  _secret,”_  Harry whines. He tries to crawl over to them but ends up tripping over Louis and falling onto his face, making the five of them burst into laughter all over again.

“Merlin’s pants,” Perrie says, shaking her head. “I’m heading up to bed.”

“No, wait,  _wait,”_  insists Harry, propping himself up on his forearms and trying to brush his hair out of his face.  “Perrie, Niall’s been  _lonely_  lately. Think about how pretty your beautiful blonde _babies_ would be. You and he should, y’know. Do it. Do  _the_   _do.”_

Perrie scoffs, her face pinking, but before she can say anything back Niall blurts out, “We already have.”

Perrie gasps and looks at Niall accusingly, who immediately slaps a hand over his mouth. Louis shrieks with glee and starts to roll around on the floor while Harry’s mouth drops open in shock.

“Veritaserum!” Liam squeals, and uses the opportunity to push a frozen Niall off of them so he can wrap his arms around Zayn’s waist and kiss him.

 _“Niall!”_  Zayn hears Perrie shouts.

“I couldn’t help it!” Niall yelps. 

Zayn detaches his mouth from Liam’s and kisses his nose, whispering, “Later,” when Liam tries to go back in for another kiss.  “Wanna see what’s going on, babe.”

Liam relents and they both sit up again, though Liam keeps a firm grip on Zayn’s waist. Harry has one of his hands covering his mouth like he’s smiling too hugely to even think about containing himself.

“He’s  _groveling,_  Christ!” Louis is shouting, pounding the floor with his fists and kicking his feet. He can’t stop laughing, and Zayn looks over to see Perrie halfway up her staircase with Niall at its base, looking like a kicked puppy as he tries to get a word in.

“Niall, I’m sorry, I didn’t know!” Harry calls after them, attempting to look bashful. With how drunk and smiley he is, it doesn’t really work properly, and Zayn watches as he loses his composure after about five seconds.

When Zayn next turns around, though, both Niall and Perrie have disappeared. 

“Ow- _ow!”_  he cat-calls delightedly.

“Where’d they go?” slurs Liam.

Now Harry and Louis look as well.  “Be sure to use protection!” Harry calls up the stairs, causing the four of them to burst into giggles once more.

When they’ve calmed down a bit, Louis sighs and rolls onto his back.  “I want another shot.”

“Maybe wait a bit, babe? We’ve been going kind of fast,” Harry suggests, gesturing to the now-mostly-empty bottle of Firewhiskey.

“Mmm,” Louis seems to agree, patting Harry fondly on the thigh. “Then I want to ask someone an invasive question.” He sits up unsteadily and his sleepy but still wicked blue eyes land on Liam.  _“Lee-_ yum, just the person I wanted to see.”

Liam gulps and Zayn feels himself tense. “What for?”

Louis smirks.  “Because Zayn won’t tell me and I want – I want  _details,_ what was your first time like?”

“My first time what?” Liam asks tentatively. Zayn sees his cheeks turning bright red and knows his own must be doing the same. 

“Having  _sex,”_  Louis says, rolling his eyes like it’s obvious.  “Zayn won’t tell me  _anything.”_

“We, um,” says Liam in a small voice, “we haven’t?”

Louis raises his eyebrows.   _“Really?”_

“I never told you we did, Lou,” says Zayn, feeling a bit annoyed. “You just assumed.”

“Some people don’t even like anal sex at all,” Harry puts in, shrugging.

Louis snorts.  “Coming from  _you,_ m’not sure if I believe that.”

Harry laughs and pulls him in for a kiss, and before long they’re back to snogging on the floor, Zayn and Liam completely forgotten. Meanwhile, Liam reaches for the bottle of Firewhiskey and takes a large pull straight from the bottle, his mouth twisted into a grimace. Zayn takes it from him after a few more sips, but only so he can finish the bottle off.

“Is it bad that we haven’t?” Liam asks in a small voice after a few moments.

Zayn shakes his head emphatically, scooting close to Liam so he can wrap his arms around him. “Not at all. Promise.”

Liam doesn’t seem convinced.  “It’s just, I –  _hic! –_ I really want to sometimes, like  _really_ want to. Like sometimes when we’re snogging on your bed and–” He breaks off and buries his face in Zayn’s neck, his cheeks hot.  Merlin, Zayn loves him so  _much._ “But – then I remember how big just two or three fingers feel in me,” Liam continues with a whisper that only Zayn can hear, “and I just – it’s a lot to think about, okay? I get scared. You’re quite big.”

Zayn snorts and kisses the top of his head.  “Then we don’t have to do it until you want to, Li.  It’s, like, the opposite of a big deal. And in case you haven’t noticed, you’re not so tiny yourself.”

“What does that –  _oh._ You’d – you’d want to do it the other way around, too?” 

“Mhmm. Definitely. We could even do it that way first, if you wanted,” Zayn whispers, squeezing Liam’s shoulders.

He feels warm inside, his stomach pleasantly filled with butterflies, even though the moment is somewhat cheapened by Harry and Louis making out on the floor not two feet away. 

“I wouldn’t know what I was doing,” Liam grumbles, shifting around and trying to snuggle closer to Zayn with a sigh. “I’ve never – never done it with  _anyone,_ before.”

“You don’t have to feel bad about it,” Zayn insists, watching as Harry leans down to whisper something in Louis’s ear that makes the other boy squirm.  “And we don’t – I  _told_  you, we don’t have to do  _anything,_ but like – everyone has to have a first time before they can have any other times.”

They both giggle at how stupid that sounds, even though it’s the truth. The two of them abruptly cut off, though, when Louis throws his head back and moans quietly, his legs coming up to wrap around Harry’s torso. 

Zayn feels that reflexive little  _tug_  in his torso he gets whenever Louis moans, leftover from a simpler time when he, Louis, and Harry spent most of their free time getting each other off.  But now he’s with Liam, and –

“Oi, we can go upstairs and give you guys some space if you want,” he says instead. “But no guarantees Perrie won’t come down here and try to watch.”

“She’s probably too busy with Niall–” Liam starts to say.

“Liam, what if we–” Louis cuts him off, his voice breathier like it gets when he’s turned on– “what if - would you want to see how to do it?”

Zayn gets what Louis is saying  _immediately_  but he’s drunk enough that he doesn’t know how to respond right away, at least not until Harry follows it up with, “Zayn used to bottom and pretend I was you.”

Harry grins as Zayn starts to splutter, and he feels Liam sit up a little straighter next to him.

Louis giggles and moans again when Harry leans back down to suck on his neck.  “Bet he’s – gagging for it at this point, aren’t you, Zee?”

 _“Louis,”_  Zayn hisses as Liam chokes on his own saliva.  “Stop it.”

“What’s going on?” Liam asks hoarsely.

“They want to fuck in front of us,” Zayn says, rolling his eyes and trying to hide how hot it’s making him, the Firewhiskey and the free show and _Liam –_

“What? How do you know?”

“Having someone else watching gets them off,” says Zayn. “It’s – it’s actually how our whole  _thing_  started.”

He gestures vaguely to Louis, Harry, and himself. Liam nods, frowning slightly.

“But we’re not–” Zayn starts.

“I remember that,” says Harry, biting his lip and spreading his legs out so they’re bracketing Louis’s.  “Lou just shoved his hand down my pants when the three of us were hanging out in our dorm. Remember that, babe?”

Louis laughs, so loudly that it startles Zayn and makes him jump.  _Christ,_ he’s on edge. He glances over at Liam, whose eyes are wide. He’s biting his lip and looking at Harry and Louis with a mixture of shame and curiosity that Zayn knows all too well.

Harry and Louis are back to kissing, but this time Harry’s moving, pushing down with slow grinds of his hips that have Louis’s fingers clawing at the back of his Henley.  Zayn doesn’t know what to do with himself, doesn’t know what to do with  _Liam,_  who’s frozen like a statue, but considering everything that’s weird about this situation, nothing about it feels  _uncomfortable._ Zayn maybe needs to re-evaluate his life.

Eventually, the other two boys break apart, and Louis looks over at them with kiss-swollen lips and dilated, knowing eyes. “So are you two staying or what, because –  _oh –_ because this is happening whether you’re here or not.”

Zayn frowns at them.  He’s starting to get hard in his trousers and he hopes they haven’t seen yet, but from the way Harry’s biting his lip and staring at him Zayn gets the idea that he’s already noticed. “It’s – it’s up to Liam.”

Liam turns to look at him, wide-eyed.

“Do you want to see, Liam?” Harry asks quietly, and Zayn remembers that all of them are still under the influence of the Veritaserum.

Liam brings his hands up to cover his face, but he can’t stop the “Yes” that slips out between his fingers.

“I  _knew_  it,” Louis says triumphantly, flipping the pair of them over so he has Harry pinned to the common room floor instead.

“Hey, wait a second,” says Zayn, his head spinning, “just because – Liam, we don’t have to – just because you  _want_  to see doesn’t mean–”

“No, I – I want to stay, Zayn. It’s. Yeah,” Liam says, cutting off. He’s still covering his face, mortified, but Zayn can see that he’s starting to get hard as well.

One of Louis’s hands has disappeared in between his and Harry’s bodies, and the next second Harry’s legs jerk and he groans into Louis’s mouth.  Fuck, they’re so hot together, Zayn had forgotten –

“C’mere,” he murmurs to Liam, pulling the other boy into his lap. It’s a bit difficult to manage, since they’re both drunk and Liam’s larger than Zayn, but Liam’s pliant enough that Zayn eventually gets him situated.  He wraps his arms around Liam’s stomach and kisses behind the shell of his ear.  “Feel how hard I am? S’for you.”

Liam shakes a little, but he says, “No, it’s not.”

“Yes it is,” Zayn insists, pressing his hips forward so Liam can feel the thick line of his cock pressed up against his arse. “It’s from thinking about having you inside me.”

Liam chokes out a little moan, gripping Zayn’s legs and letting his head loll back so their mouths can meet.  Zayn’s head hasn’t stopped spinning for what feels like days, and he kisses Liam hungrily and licks into his mouth to try to keep himself from floating away.

When they break apart, Zayn notices that Harry and Louis have shifted so that Harry’s on top again, minus his shirt, which has disappeared to who knows where. They’re still kissing, but Harry’s fingers are making quick work of the button at the top of Louis’s trousers and they’re starting to get frantic.

Zayn moves his hand down to cup Liam through the front of his trousers, and Liam jolts like he’s been burned. He presses down ever-so-gently as he watches Louis and Harry whisper back and forth, wondering what they’re planning as Harry pulls Louis’s trousers off.

“Liam,” says Louis suddenly, and Zayn and Liam both jump because it’s the first thing any of them has said in a while.  “You and Zayn have done stuff with fingers, right?”

“Yeah,” Liam says quietly, his legs shaking as Zayn continues to palm him. At this point, the motion is more soothing for Zayn than for anyone else.

“That’s what you always have to do first,” says Louis, kicking his trousers fully off of his legs as Harry gets up to sit back on his knees.  “Else it’s not much fun for anyone.”

Liam nods, watching intently as Louis rolls lazily onto his front and then pushes himself up onto his hands and knees.  Louis turns around to look happily at Harry, who’s bright-eyed and reverent as always as he slides Louis’s briefs down his legs just enough to get his bum out.

“Um,” Liam says tentatively as they both watch Harry smooth his hands over the tan, fleshy expanse of Louis’s arse, squeezing each cheek in turn before spreading them apart and pressing a dry thumb against his hole.  “Um, don’t you need–”

Harry winks at the pair of them and Liam cuts off with a gasp as Harry leans down to fit his mouth in between Louis’s cheeks, tonguing at his hole. Zayn’s cock twitches and he grips Liam a bit tighter at the whimper Louis gives in response, the way his eyes widen in surprise and then slowly flutter shut in pleasure.

“Oh  _god,”_  Louis moans, pushing his hips back and biting his lip as Harry’s mouth works noisily.

Liam’s breathing hard at the spectacle in front of them, and Zayn can feel his pulse quickening where his lips are pressed to Liam’s neck. 

“I didn’t know that was a thing,” Liam says, sounding mesmerized.

“Mmm, definitely a thing,” Zayn replies, tweaking Liam’s nipple through his shirt. “Not everyone’s into it, though.”

“Zayn is,” Louis slurs, still trying valiantly to tease them and maintain control of the situation even when he’s squirming on the floor and getting eaten out.  “Probably just –  _fuck –_ didn’t wanna scare you off with how much he likes eating arse.”

Zayn snorts derisively into Liam’s neck and grips him more firmly through his trousers.  They watch as Louis grins to himself, and then Harry does something with his tongue that makes Louis’s jaw go slack and his brows knit together.

“Ah, ah,  _oh_ my god – Harry’s better, though,” Louis continues shakily, his hands scrabbling for purchase on the rug, and even though this mortally offends Zayn, this seems to mollify Harry because Louis’s face relaxes a second later and his thighs stop shaking.  Louis reaches behind his back and grabs onto some of Harry’s curls, pulling Harry forward while he pushes his arse back and arches into his mouth.   _“So_ good, babe, gonna – yeah, eat me out–”

They’re moving together now, Louis’s hips stuttering back and forth and Harry’s mouth following him wherever he goes. Harry gives a muffled groan and drops a hand to the front of his jeans to press down on his own hard cock, which has been straining at the unforgiving denim ever since he buried his face in Louis’s bum.

Louis’s face kind of looks how Zayn feels, drunk and stupidly  _happy,_ and it’s completely not Zayn’s fault that his heart is in his throat over how much he wants to do to Liam what Harry is doing to Louis. Or the other way around, even. He just wants to touch and lick Liam all over, that’s all he  _wants._

“Harry looks like he really likes it,” Liam whispers to Zayn as they watch Harry bring his hand back up and use both of his hands to force Louis’s hips to the floor, pinning the smaller boy down so he can get his tongue deeper inside.  Louis’s eyes squeeze shut and he whines into the carpet, his face flushing pink.

“Harry likes anything that has to do with Louis,” Zayn points out. “But you’re not wrong.”

Harry takes one hand off of Louis’s bum so he can flip the bird in Zayn’s general direction.

“He likes it best when – when I ride his face, don’t you, babe?” Louis gasps out, pulling on Harry’s hair. “Just sit on his face til he can’t even breathe and he – he fucking  _loves_  it.”

Merlin, Louis isn’t even  _ashamed_  in the slightest at how much he’s getting off on this. Neither is Harry, who draws back slightly to gasp in a few breaths of air, kiss the flesh of Louis’s arse, and breathe, “More – more than anything, Lou.”

Then he seems to remember that they have an audience, looking at Zayn and Liam like he’d forgotten they were there.  “Oh, Liam, so, um – any questions so far?” Harry asks, his mouth quirking up like he’s fighting the urge to laugh at the shocked expression on Liam’s face.

“Don’t think so,” Liam all but squeaks.

Zayn catches Harry’s eye and grins, and they both laugh.

“You wanna, like – especially the first time, there needs to be a ton of prep,” says Louis from his spot on the ground. “You don’t want to hurt him.”

“Right,” Liam agrees.  Zayn’s mind slips back into imagining Liam, the boy in his arms right now, looming over him and thrusting inside him, and he feels his thoughts go pleasantly fuzzy and blank. He hugs Liam tighter.

“But it’s not like you have to rim someone every time you have sex with them, either,” says Harry, his fingers toying absentmindedly with Louis’s spit-wet hole and making the smaller boy twitch and shudder.

“You would if you could,” Louis shoots back, his voice breaking at the end when Harry goes back to lapping at his entrance.

Zayn turns his head to suck a mark into the side of Liam’s neck, and he feels Liam grip his thighs tighter.  He moves his hand up to the button on Liam’s jeans, toying with it as a sort of question, and brings his other hand down to take over massaging Liam’s dick.

“You alright if I take you out of these jeans?” he whispers into Liam’s ear, sucking on the lobe after he does so.

Liam doesn’t respond for a bit, although his hips are still moving ever-so-slightly up to chase the rhythmic presses of Zayn’s hand. 

On the carpet, Louis moans loudly and then bites at his hand to muffle the noise, and his hips stutter forward like it’s too intense and he’s trying to get away but Harry doesn’t let him, just holds Louis firmly and pulls him back against his mouth.

“Yeah,” Liam whispers after a minute, after Zayn’s gotten so hard it’s starting to  _hurt._ “Yeah, please.”

Zayn exhales a breath against Liam’s neck, bites him there gently as he undoes the button and zip of Liam’s jeans.  Liam’s so hard it’s difficult to get him out of the slit at the front of his boxers, but it’s so worth it when Zayn succeeds and he  _sees_  him, rock hard and dripping where Zayn’s been playing with him for long minutes.

“God, fuck, Zayn –  _Zayn,”_  Liam groans, moving his hands further behind him so he can scrape his nails up Zayn’s sides, making him hiss.

“Well hel _lo,”_  Louis drawls, and Zayn tears his eyes away from Liam’s cock to notice that Louis is watching the pair of them intently, his eyes dark as he bites his lip.

Zayn feels his hackles rise at how Louis is looking at Liam like a piece of  _meat –_ although he doesn’t blame him in the slightest – and he sees Harry’s eyes blink open long enough to dart over to them and take in the situation before he closes them again and his brows knit together, redoubling his efforts to make Louis fall apart. Louis hisses and drops his head back down, the strong line of his shoulders pushing out at his t-shirt as he sobs and rocks back on Harry’s face.

 _“God,_ I love you,” he whimpers into the carpet, and it makes Harry groan in agreement and thumb over the dimples at the bottom of Louis’s spine.

Zayn refocuses his attention back on Liam, feeling almost intrusive when it comes to Louis and Harry even though they literally  _invited_  him and Liam to watch them fuck. With the hand not currently preoccupied with Liam’s dick, Zayn turns the other boy’s face to the side so they can kiss again and grins when he feels how slack Liam’s lips have gone from the pleasure.  Zayn wants to jack Liam off fast and hard but he also wants this to  _last,_ wants to take Liam apart piece by piece til he’s shaking and then put him back together again.

To do that, he’s going to need something more than precome to slick things up. Where’s his wand gotten to, anyway?

Zayn eventually breaks the kiss to find his wand, and Liam’s chest is heaving by the time he’s finally found it thanks to the tight grip Zayn’s kept on his cock.  He tries to wandlessly Summon the lube from his bedroom, hoping that he’s sobered up enough to make it work. 

The next second, the lube flies down the stairs and into Zayn’s hand, but so do several pairs of pants and a bottle of shower gel that hits the side of Harry’s head and makes him jolt back.

“Why’d you stop?” Louis gasps. His t-shirt is starting to get damp around the collar and his chest is heaving.

Harry’s is too, and his lips are puffy, the most obscene shade of red Zayn has ever seen them. He’s breathing hard, his eyes half-lidded, and he reaches down to rub at himself through his jeans again.  “Zayn assaulted me, is why. Here, get – get your kit off.”

He helps Louis take his shirt off as Louis stands up on shaky knees, and while Harry’s peeling his jeans off, Zayn takes the opportunity to squeeze out a palmful of lube into his hand and gives it a few seconds to warm up.  When he looks back, Louis is back in Harry’s lap except this time they’re both naked and Louis is working over Harry’s big cock while Harry moans into his mouth.

Liam’s been rather quiet for the last minute or so, and Zayn would worry that he wasn’t enjoying himself except for the fact that Liam’s maybe the hardest Zayn’s ever seen him.

“Y’alright, babe?” Zayn asks quietly. He brings his slick hand down to spread the lube over the hard, hot length of Liam’s cock and Liam’s whole body jolts.

“Yeah, I just –  _g-god,_ Zayn, I don’t know what to – do with myself,” Liam gasps out, his hips twitching as Zayn starts to stroke up and down. His fist makes a slick, dirty sound every time he strokes up and over the head of Liam’s cock.

Liam feels so big in Zayn’s hand, and Zayn can’t help but imagine how it’s going to feel inside him – he’s barely thought of anything else this entire  _week,_ Merlin, he’s hopeless.

“Don’t have to do anything,” murmurs Zayn. He admires the bruises he’s already made on Liam’s neck and sets about biting another one into his skin, grinding forward against Liam’s bum to get some relief for his own erection.

“Zee,” says Louis, breaking the two out of them out of their spell. Zayn looks up, startled, to see Louis holding out his hand expectantly.  “Lube?”

“Oh. Right.”

He tosses the bottle to Louis with his clean hand. 

 _“Now,”_  Louis says theatrically, “for your first time a tongue probably won’t be enough, so–”

“Is it ever?” Liam asks, his breath hitching as Zayn grips him tighter.

Harry smirks. “Depends how much you want it to hurt.”

Liam closes his eyes and bites his lip and  _fuck_ , Zayn has to fight off the urge to come then and there.

“But no, fingers are usually – usually in order,” Louis says, stuttering a little as Harry starts to suck on his pulse point.  “’Specially for a cock like yours. Though at this point, I think we’re all nice and familiar with how big your fingers are too–”

 _“Louis,”_  Zayn hisses. There are  _lines._ At least, he’s still in the business of pretending there are.

Louis snickers, hiccupping when Harry yanks his head to the side so more of his throat is exposed.  “Harry, Harry –  _Haz._ C’mon, we have to – show them how we–”

He cuts off when Harry starts to whisper something in his ear, and whatever it is makes Louis’s breathing pick up audibly.  Harry trails a hand down Louis’s chest, skates it over his tummy then wraps it around Louis’s cock, which is starting to drip precome.

“No,  _no,_ I – stop it, I’ll come, don’t wanna come yet,” Louis whines softly, but he’s not looking smugly at Zayn and Liam anymore, his eyes are glassy and unfocused as Harry plays with his cock, and Zayn gets the feeling that this isn’t even  _for_  him and Liam.

“You can come twice,” Harry murmurs, rubbing over Louis’s nipple with his other hand.  “Wanna make you come in front of them just like this, yeah?”

Louis bites his lip and his eyes slip shut, and he looks equal parts upset at losing control of the situation and  _relieved_  that Harry’s telling him what he wants.  The lube lays forgotten on the floor next to the two of them. 

Zayn can’t remember the last time he breathed, and when Louis’s thighs start to shake, Liam’s cock gives a little jerk and blurts out more precome, making the glide of Zayn’s hand even smoother.

Louis’s chest is rising and falling quickly now, shallowly, and he’s starting to fuck forward into Harry’s fist with his eyes tightly shut like he can’t even help it.  Harry’s eyes are dark as he watches Louis fuck his hand, and his other hand is wandering all over Louis’s torso, smoothing over his bare skin and pressing in bruises with his fingertips.

It’s when Louis’s mouth drops open in a wordless moan that Zayn’s cock actually starts to  _hurt_  from how hard he is, and Liam squirming back against him only fans the flames licking at his torso.

“Harry,” Louis groans, trying to tuck his face back against Harry’s neck.  His chest is flushed like it gets when he’s close, and Harry leans forward and pulls Louis closer so the smaller boy can turn and hide his face. “I’m,  _nngh,_ I’m–”

“Fuck,” Liam swears quietly.

“You close?” Zayn asks him. Liam nods, so Zayn slows the pace of his hand because he doesn’t want Liam to come too soon.  “Don’t want you to come til they’re fucking.”

Liam hisses and scrapes his nails up Zayn’s sides again, making Zayn’s hips jerk forward.

Louis mumbles something into Harry’s neck and Harry laughs, speeding his hand up. “Yeah, they’re still watching, love.  You look so good like this.”

Louis’s thighs tremble and Zayn stills his hand on Liam’s cock completely in anticipation, holding Liam still when he groans and tries to buck up.  Louis lets his head fall forward then, his chest heaving and his cheeks pink, and looks up at the two of them and the inevitably debauched picture they make. 

“Jesus  _Christ,”_  he swears, and then he squeezes his eyes shut and  _comes,_  shaking hard and shooting up onto his tummy as Harry holds him upright and jerks him through it.  Harry’s eyes are glued to Louis’s cock as it twitches and spurts in his hand, and he kisses up the column of Louis’s throat when Louis is finished.

Zayn becomes abruptly aware of the fact that he hasn’t breathed in maybe a minute and he starts to gasp in air once more, his hand squeezing around Liam’s wet cock and dragging the other boy in closer. 

“Fuck,” says Louis, his voice ragged, and he gives a little half-laugh before slumping to the ground as Harry gently lowers him down. Zayn chuckles as well, maybe because he’s nervous, maybe because he’s so turned on he doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

“This is normally where I’d give Harry a blowjob,” Louis mumbles into the carpet, seemingly addressing Liam once more. “But I’m not sure if I can move at the moment.”

“Plus Liam seems a bit impatient,” Harry comments, grinning and reaching for the bottle of lube. 

“He does, doesn’t he,” says Zayn, kissing Liam’s cheek and starting to tug on his cock once more.  It’s still so wet and now a dark, dark shade of red that has Zayn’s mouth watering.

“You do too,” Liam grumbles, gesturing shakily to Harry. His voice wavers a bit at the end and destroys any remaining dignity he might’ve been trying to gather.

Harry blushes. “Can’t blame me, though.”

He flips open the bottle of lube and squeezes some out onto two of his fingers.

“Don’t need any, just fuck me,” Louis groans. He still hasn’t moved from where he collapsed onto the carpet. 

“Yes you do,” says Harry, slipping his wet fingers through Louis’s crack until they catch on his hole. “Plus we’re trying to make this educational, I thought.”

Louis starts to prop himself up on his elbows, looks like he’s going to argue further, but then Zayn sees Harry push his hand forward and Louis moans loudly, shuddering as his face contorts in bliss.  He hastily props himself up the rest of the way, getting back up onto his hands and knees, and lets Harry start to move his finger in and out, in and out.

“You don’t wanna skimp on this part,” Harry informs them primly, shifting a little closer to Louis so he can get a better angle with his fingers.  “Like, look at your cock, then look at the size of your fingers.”

Zayn looks down at where the wet red head of Liam’s cock is disappearing into his fist over and over again and barely holds back a moan. Zayn’s whole hand is shiny with lube, and he knows his fingers are _tiny_  compared to Liam’s.

Liam’s breathing hard, his whole body shaking, and Zayn wonders if he’s even paying any attention when Harry continues, “There’s no way it’s not going to be a stretch anyway, at least not unless you use your whole hand, but–”

“Another, add another, H, come  _on,”_  Louis whines, cutting Harry off and reaching back to grab greedily at Harry’s slick fingers.  Harry does so with wide eyes, pulling Louis apart with his thumbs so he can watch his fingers going in and out, and Louis grins drunkenly now that he has what he wanted. 

He looks over at Zayn and Liam.  “You wanna see, Liam?” he asks, arching his back and practically  _purring_  now that he seems to be mostly recovered from his orgasm. “I’m told I’m quite pretty back there.”

“Absolutely not,” Zayn growls immediately, exactly at the same time as Harry’s, “Not a chance.”

Zayn wonders if he’s the only one who hears Liam’s, “I’m good, thanks,” and he knows Liam really means it because of the Veritaserum.  He wonders if he’s the only one who’s in danger of getting crushed under the weight of his love.

“Calm  _down_ , I was just  _asking,”_  slurs Louis, squeaking a bit as Harry starts to move his fingers more roughly.

Zayn laughs. “You remember how  _mental_  Harry went the last time you talked about Liam in bed?”

Liam huffs, squirming in Zayn’s arms.

“Couldn’t walk straight for a day,” Louis agrees happily. He wiggles his bum and squeaks when Harry stills him again by sliding a third finger inside.

“Zayn,” Liam whines, scratching up and down Zayn’s sides again. Zayn realizes that Liam probably isn’t super keen on hearing Zayn talk about his past sexual escapades with the other two. 

“Sorry, love,” he whispers into Liam’s ear, kissing him on the cheek again and giving him one more firm tug before letting go of his cock.  “Here, wait a sec.”

Zayn pulls back a bit so he can take his t-shirt off because  _Merlin_  it’s getting hot in here, and Liam does the same a second later.  Then Zayn’s back on him, presses chest to back once again but this time they’re both shirtless and there’s so much warm  _skin_  between them and it’s perfect. He wraps himself back around his boyfriend and wonders if his Liam can feel Zayn’s frantic heartbeat thudding against his back.

“I love you,” he whispers, wrapping his hand back around Liam’s cock.

The slide is dryer now, the tugs harsher, but it just makes Liam groan from the extra friction and throw his head back onto Zayn’s shoulder before murmuring, “Love you too.”

“You’re still okay?” Zayn asks, wanting to make sure Liam’s still cool with everything that’s going on. He himself is obviously fine with it, and Merlin knows Harry and Louis want this, but Zayn wants to be sure about Liam.

Liam nods hastily, mutters, “Yeah, good – great, actually,” as they both watch Harry squeeze in a fourth finger.  Louis tenses up and bites his own fingers, his other hand tugging at his own hair.

Harry looks back at Zayn and Liam and smiles, and his expression would be kind and indulgent in any other circumstances but it’s rather offset by his half-lidded eyes and red cheeks and hand up Louis’s arse.

“You don’t always have to do four, either,” he tells Liam conversationally, his voice even deeper than a minute ago as he continues to move his fingers inside Louis.  “Three’s a safe bet, two’s if you, like, absolutely can’t wait, and four’s if you–”

“Fucking get  _on with it,”_  Louis growls into his palm, rocking back and forth onto Harry’s hand.

Harry grins, tearing his eyes away from Liam and Zayn to look back at his boyfriend.  He bends down to gently kiss the back of Louis’s neck, and the annoyed look on Louis’s face softens before Louis turns around to kiss him back, quick and dirty and sweet before they break apart again.

“This part’s important t-too,” Louis says, stuttering on the last word as Harry draws his fingers out slowly. “You have to go slow when you’re actually doing it at first. You don’t want to hurt him.”

Zayn rolls his eyes as Liam nods, captivated. Zayn’s pretty sure any real educational value this ever had flew out the window well before Harry made Louis come in front of them, but he’s not going to complain.  He gives Liam’s cock a few more strokes just to feel him shake gently, pressing his other hand into Liam’s abs to feel them jump under his fingers.

They watch as Harry grabs the lube again and squeezes some more out to generously coat his cock.  Zayn humps forward and bites at Liam’s shoulder in anticipation, and then Harry says, “It’s always better to use too much lube than too–”

“Liam has eyes and common sense, Harold,” Louis snaps, turning over his shoulder to glare at Harry (though his mouth is quirked up at the corners).

Harry grins back at him like he can see right through Louis’s impatient bullshit but gets into position all the same as Louis turns to face forward, settling onto his elbows and wetting his lips with his tongue.

Liam’s breathing stutters as Harry runs the tip of his cock through the lube-slick mess of Louis’s crack.  “Yeah?” Zayn murmurs, licking at the shell of his ear and breathing in the scent of his hair, his sweat. “Wanna fuck me like that?”

Liam whimpers a little and nods frantically, but before Zayn can say anything else Louis gives a little hiss as Harry starts to push forward.  Zayn’s hole throbs in sympathy but also  _longing,_ because it’s been  _months_  since he’s been fucked, and also months since he’s  _done_  the fucking, he realizes, and suddenly his cock feels like it’s about to burst right there in his trousers. 

Louis’s mouth is just hanging open and it looks like he’s barely remembering how to breathe, and his cock is already hard again and twitching against his tummy. Zayn wonders how long Harry and Louis have wanted to do this in front of him and Liam, because they seem to be  _really_ getting off on it.

Zayn hooks his chin over Liam’s shoulder and sees that Liam’s eyes are wide, glued to the spot where Harry and Louis are now joined together.  As Harry finally bottoms out, shuddering out a breath and wiping some sweat off of his forehead, Liam asks, “Doesn’t it – doesn’t that  _hurt?”_

Louis giggles hysterically, his hands white-knuckled claws braced on the carpet.   _“God,_ no.”

Maybe the Veritaserum can make things even more interesting.  “Tell Liam how it feels, Lou,” Zayn suggests as Harry starts to move.  He’s going to have to unzip his trousers soon before he creams them like a fifteen-year-old. “How’s it feel?”

“Hnnn,” says Louis eloquently, trying to brace himself and gasping as Harry rocks in deep. “Feels so good, fuck, I don’t know what you want me to – god,  _god,_  I just want it all the time–”

“Fuck,” Harry swears, his eyes wide and dilated, as Louis blushes at what he’s just admitted and hides his face in his arms.

Liam echoes him, squirming a little in Zayn’s arms.  Zayn grins against Liam’s shoulder and bites down hard as he watches his best friend get fucked.

Harry leans over Louis so he can bite at his shoulders, lick at his ear while he fucks him, looping a strong arm under his pelvis so Louis’s hips and arse stay where they are.  He picks up into a fast, steady rhythm so that the slap of his hipbones against Louis’s arse starts to become audible, and little  _ah, ah_ ’s start to fall unbidden from Louis’s lips as Harry ruts into him.

“Oh,” Liam breathes out, just shy of inaudible.  “I didn’t – oh, my god.”

Zayn takes his hand off of Liam’s cock and spits into it before gripping Liam once more and starting to stroke him, the glide slicker now.  He starts to pull Liam back against him in something resembling a rhythm, because if he’s going to come in his trousers he might as well get to pretend he’s fucking Liam while doing so.

“Is that – I want that,” Liam continues, bracing his hands on the floor so he can start to fuck up into Zayn’s hand.

Zayn’s heart almost stops. “Which way?”

“Either,” says Liam quickly, like he doesn’t even care, “either one, I just –  _look_ at them–”

Louis and Harry aren’t even listening to them anymore, too caught up in each other, but Zayn can understand what Liam’s trying to say.  Harry leans back up, sitting up fully on his knees to change the angle, and it makes Louis throw his head back, makes his whole  _face_  light up as he moans,  _“Yes–”_

Harry nods at the sound and stops running his hands all over Louis’s body in favor of settling them on his hips, gripping tightly enough to bruise as he keeps up his rhythm and starts pulling Louis back to meet him.

“Oh my god,” Liam keeps saying, like he can’t stop, and his cock is starting to get even wetter in Zayn’s hand as precome trickles down the shaft and Zayn swipes it up to use as slick.  He can feel Liam’s heartbeat pulsing in his dick, and he knows that means that Liam’s close, close from thinking about  _fucking_  him and watching their best friends do it right in front of them –

“Harder, want it harder,” moans Louis, even though his body is already being jolted with every thrust.

Harry grins like he wants to tease, though, and slows down a little, tucking some of his curls behind his ear as Louis swears and tries to push back. He turns to Liam and Zayn, his pupils blown, and says, “And sometimes he’ll say he wants it harder, which–”

 _“None of that,”_  Louis hisses, making the other three laugh breathlessly.

They’re all close at this point – the air in the room has changed, less casual and more intense, and the air is heavier. Their breathing is louder, especially Liam’s when he sees Harry fist a hand in Louis’s hair and  _tug_  until Louis’s back is flush against his chest.

Louis is panting and shaking – Zayn knows this is one of his favorite positions – and he swears loudly as Harry starts to move again, keeping one hand wound tight in Louis’s hair as he uses the other to cage Louis close, keeping him from falling back down.  Louis’s cock is bouncing back and forth from the force of Harry’s thrusts, hard and untouched and  _dripping_ , and Louis is biting his lip like he’s seconds away from crying at how good it feels.

So is Zayn, really, and the friction from his pants against his cock is just bordering on too much but it’s  _not_  too much and it’s  _rough_  and  _good_ and now Liam is working back against him, too, having caught on to what Zayn was doing, and they’re both so close –

“Oh fuck,” Louis bites out, “fuck me,  _fuck_  me, m’gonna come–”

Harry’s panting and sweating from keeping up the pace but he nods frantically, closing his wild eyes and biting down on Louis’s neck, tugging harder on his hair as he drops his other hand down to Louis’s cock and starts to jerk him off.

 _“God,”_  moans Liam, grinding back against Zayn just before his cock starts to spurt and twitch in Zayn’s hand, covering his fingers and Liam’s jeans in pearly white come.  Liam shudders as he orgasms, his head lolling back, and Zayn bites his own lip so hard he tastes blood as he loosens his grip on Liam’s cock and starts to rut forward, chasing his own release.

He chances a glance up at Louis and Harry, who are already looking at him, and when their eyes meet Louis’s face  _crumples_  and he comes with a long, drawn-out moan, shaking in Harry’s arms as he spills over Harry’s fingers and all over the carpet.  Harry’s eyes slip shut and his mouth drops open as Louis comes apart around him, and he leans down to mouth at Louis’s shoulder and muffle his moan into Louis’s skin as he sits back on his knees, groaning and dragging Louis with him as he shakes through his own orgasm and comes inside Louis’s arse.

That does it for Zayn, who crushes Liam tightly to his chest as the friction finally tips him over the edge and he comes in his trousers, almost _whining_  into Liam’s skin as he comes so hard his head spins.

xxx

The next morning, Zayn wakes up in his own bed with one of the worst hangovers he’s ever had.  Next to him, Liam’s still passed out cold. 

As Zayn staggers into the bathroom to take a piss, all of the memories from last night come flooding back to him and he has to actively fight with himself not to get hard before he can wee.   _Fuck,_ that really happened, didn’t it? Merlin. Hopefully Liam’s not having any regrets, because that’s one of the hottest things Zayn’s ever done. And now he knows that Liam – Liam  _does_  want to fuck him. His whole body’s tingling, and not just because he has poor circulation in his extremities when he’s hungover.

When Zayn pads back into his room from his bathroom, Liam’s starting to stir. He cracks one open and sees Zayn, and his whole face lights up. “Morning!”

“How are you so cheerful?” Zayn asks, frowning. “Are you not hungover?”

“I don’t think so,” says Liam. “I don’t think I get those.”

Zayn groans again, flopping back down on the bed face-first.

“I can’t stop thinking about last night,” Liam whispers once a few minutes have passed.

“That’s a good thing, right?” asks Zayn, turning onto his side so he can look at Liam.

Liam smiles and nods. “I’m –  _god,_ that was hot.”

Zayn nods in agreement.  “I wonder if they’re still downstairs.”

“Probably,” says Liam. “But I don’t think we have to check just yet.”

He quirks an eyebrow meaningfully, and Zayn is puzzled until he looks down and sees Liam’s morning erection straining at the sheets. “No, I’m sure they’ll be alright for another hour.”

One hour, one shower, and two orgasms later, Zayn and Liam finally make their way downstairs to find Harry and Louis cuddled up on the biggest couch, still asleep.

“Morning, deviants,” Zayn shouts in their faces.

They startle awake, and Harry automatically grips Louis closer and tighter before he realizes it’s just Zayn and relaxes.

“Get the come cleaned off your trousers yet?” Louis asks him, his voice rough.

Harry bursts out laughing, and Zayn jumps on top of Louis so he can roll both of them to the floor and start tickling him.

And that’s that. It’s not awkward at all, which is almost concerning to Zayn, because –  _shouldn’t_  it be?

But, really, he and Harry and Louis have never had an exactly conventional friendship, and it only follows that Liam should get sucked into their weird semi-sexual orbit too.

Now, all that’s left to see is if Liam’s ever going to follow up on his promise.

xxx

It happens sooner than Zayn expects. Like, two-days-later soon.

They don’t plan on it beforehand – it’s just another Tuesday night, and Liam has a free period first thing in the morning on Wednesdays so he always bothers Zayn to stay up later than Zayn probably should, which usually involves orgasms and snuggling.

This particular Tuesday night, they’re in Zayn’s room (also typical), and Liam has Zayn spread out on the large bed, three fingers in Zayn’s ass and Zayn’s cock in his mouth.  Zayn’s chest feels tight, like he can barely breathe, because there’s so much suction around his shaft and pressure inside him that he feels like he might combust from the inside out.

“Liam,” he moans again, soft, his voice raspy from deepthroating Liam earlier.  “Liam, please.”

He wants to come but he never wants this to stop –

Liam’s fingers still inside him and he draws off of Zayn’s cock, and Zayn only just restrains himself from shoving Liam’s head back down. “Zayn, have you – I’ve been, um, thinking about stuff.”

Zayn frowns. Can this maybe possibly wait until  _after_  he’s come? “Cool.”

“No, like –  _sex_  stuff. Actual sex.”

 _That_ gets Zayn’s attention. Especially since he’s already been fingered open.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Liam repeats, looking up at him from his spot between Zayn’s legs.  His brown eyes are dark, almost black.  “I can’t stop thinking about how you’d feel around me.”

“Merlin,” Zayn mutters, biting his lip before looking up at the top of his four-poster.  He’s – he’s never seen Liam so  _intense,_ and yes he’s wanted this for so long but suddenly Zayn is  _nervous_ , like a bloody  _virgin,_ because Liam’s quite big and Zayn’s forgotten how to relax around a cock.

“Zayn?” Liam asks, sounding unsure. 

Zayn shakes back into himself.  “Yeah, yeah, I –  _fuck,_ of course I want to. You’ll just have to, um, go slow.”

Liam nods, looking determined, and Zayn realizes that of  _course_  he can trust Liam with this, there’s no need to be nervous – there’s no one else in the world who would ever be  _more_  careful with him like this than Liam would be. Will be. Is about to be.

When Liam lets his fingers slip from Zayn’s body, Zayn can’t control the little moan of loss he lets out, and it just gets even more drawn out when Liam bends down to kiss the tip of his cock before drawing off completely to reach for the bottle of lube tangled somewhere in the sheets.

“D’you want me to ride you?” Zayn asks, turning onto his side to watch the line of Liam’s back shift as he searches through the sheets.

Liam shrugs as he finally finds the bottle.  “If you want. I just – I just want to be able to kiss you, when. Yeah.”

Zayn smiles and leans forward to kiss him, feeling loose and open and naughty and completely  _ready._ They kiss for a long minute, panting hungrily into each other’s mouths before it clearly gets to be too much for Liam and he climbs on top of Zayn, pressing him down into the mattress.

“Mmm,” Zayn moans into his mouth, his heart jackhammering against his ribcage as Liam’s larger body engulfs his own. All he can see, all he can feel is  _Liam._  “Or we could do it like this, too.”

“Can we?” Liam asks, peppering kisses down Zayn’s jaw.

 _“Yes,”_  Zayn breathes, wrapping his arms around Liam’s neck and bringing him back down for more kisses. He feels Liam slicking up his cock one-handed, and – Merlin, this is actually  _happening,_ okay, okay, he needs to calm down and pray he doesn’t come before Liam’s even all the way in. “I want you so much.”

Liam’s shaking slightly, and as he reaches behind Zayn to put the lube bottle back on the dresser, Zayn kisses the birthmark on his neck, sucks at it until he’s sure it will bruise and Liam is gasping and dropping down on top of him, his wet cock brushing against Zayn’s.

Zayn giggles. “No, no, don’t waste it – here.”

He bends his legs up and wraps them around Liam’s bum, bringing him forward until he can feel the slick tip of Liam’s cock pressed against his open hole.  Liam shudders, pulling back so he can look Zayn in the eye, and Zayn – Zayn’s not nervous anymore, not when Liam’s so  _close_  and he can almost feel his hole remember what it’s been missing, trying to pull Liam inside through sheer force of will.

“I’m so happy my first time is with you,” Liam whispers, bending down to kiss him, and why does he have to  _say_  shit like that, fuck, he’s so  _cute,_ and Zayn can feel how nervous he is through the kiss so he strokes one of his hands over Liam’s cheek.

“I love you so much,” he tells Liam, kissing his nose and then both of his cheeks.

Liam’s cheeks get pink.  “I love you too,” he says, his eyes shining, and then he’s pushing forward and –  _oh,_ he’s big, but Zayn’s not open enough and he’s slipping –

“Wait, here,” Zayn says hastily, reaching a hand down to line Liam’s cock up with his hole and keep it there. “Now go.”

Liam pushes forward again, his whole body shaking, and Zayn keeps his hand as steady as he can until the first few inches are inside, and then he finally allows himself to fall back onto the bed and  _gasp_  at how full he feels and how much of Liam is  _inside_  him.

“Oh my god,” Liam is saying over and over, like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.

Zayn is so in love with him it  _hurts._

When Liam finally bottoms out, Zayn can barely breathe, like he’s going to feel forever  _empty_  whenever he doesn’t have this perfect cock inside him.  Liam keeps still, which is probably good for both of them (Zayn for his arse, Liam for his stamina), but it just means that both of them are shaking against each other, trembling until Zayn finally says, “Move, you can – if you–”

“Okay,” Liam grits out, pulling out slowly, so that Zayn can feel the wet drag of every  _inch,_ and then thrusts back inside.

 _“Fuck,”_  Zayn cries out, his nails scratching Liam’s shoulder and making the other boy shudder.

Liam does it again, and again, and a couple thrusts later the headboard starts knocking against the wall as Liam pants, “You’re so – inside – you’re so  _tight,_  I’m gonna–”

“It’s okay, just–” Zayn breathes out, equally incoherent, drunk off the pleasure of the dick in his arse. He was close before Liam even pushed inside, and he reasons it shouldn’t take more than a few good strokes of his dick to get him off.

Before Zayn can get a hand around himself, though, Liam pushes forward again and says, “No, I should – let me–”

Liam shifts onto one elbow in order to get a hand in between them and around Zayn’s cock, and as he continues thrusting with a different balance, his angle changes and –

“Oh fuck,” cries Zayn, throwing his head back and tightening his legs around Liam’s waist. “It’s – right there,  _Liam,_ oh–”

Liam hisses and tries to keep the angle, putting more power behind his hips so the headboard starts to rock again as he keeps hitting Zayn’s prostate, and not five strokes later Zayn’s sent hurtling over the edge from the double stimulation. He clenches  _hard_  around the cock in his arse and shoots out over Liam’s fingers and all over his stomach, and his vision whites out as his back arches.

He can still  _hear,_ though, can still feel how stiff Liam goes when Zayn clenches around him, and it’s only a few seconds more before Liam is whining and shuddering and rutting forward, shoving himself fully inside and hugging Zayn tightly as Zayn feels warmth spread inside him.

Zayn closes his eyes tightly and hugs Liam just as close, feeling warm and safe and loved in a way he  _hasn’t_  before.

“Holy shit,” Liam says eventually, his face buried in Zayn’s neck.

Zayn laughs weakly, kissing the scratches he left on one of Liam’s shoulders.

“How did Harry do that for, like, ten minutes?” asks Liam with wonder.

“Practice,” says Zayn. He draws lazy patterns in the sweat on Liam’s back, absentmindedly tries to recall a time he’s ever felt happier, fails. “Lots and lots of practice.”

“Mmm,” Liam mumbles absently.  “I think there’s lots and lots of practice in our future.”

Zayn shivers, clenches weakly in an aftershock that has Liam hissing.  “Maybe a shower first, but absolutely. That was amazing.”

He feels Liam’s face heat up even more against his neck. “Love you,” he mumbles.

“Love you more,” Zayn replies automatically, and of course Liam has to disagree, sending them spiraling an argument that doesn’t end until Zayn gets on his knees fifteen minutes later in the shower and shuts Liam up the best way he knows how.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louis has big plans for Harry's birthday, Gemma teaches Harry an interesting spell, and Harry plans to spoil Louis for Valentine's Day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left after this one! (Plus the epilogue.)  
> I hope you like it, and thanks for sticking with me this far. :)

Louis has never had a Patronus interrupt him during sex before, but apparently there’s a first time for everything.

“How much longer’s it gonna be, Lou?” the sleek silver dolphin asks in Stan’s voice, then promptly disappears.

Louis huffs out a breath, partly because he’s indignant and partly because Harry’s really,  _really_  good with his tongue. His hands only shake a little bit when he reaches over to the bedside table, retrieves his wand, and says,  _“Expecto Patronum!”_

He almost feels a little uncomfortable when his silver stag gazes at him attentively, like it’s judging him for sitting on Harry’s face. Louis raises up on his knees a little, away from Harry’s wicked tongue so he can get out a full sentence without moaning embarrassingly.

“I asked for a full hour, Stan. It’s Harry’s birthday, show some respect.”

Louis waves his wand and the stag gallops off, jumping through the doorframe and presumably racing down into the Slytherin common room. (He just  _knew_  that talking Patronus trick would come in handy after Harry taught him last week.)

Underneath him, Harry whines and shifts his leg, jostling his hard, painful-looking cock against his stomach where it’s been steadily leaking precome since Louis stopped paying attention to it some time ago. That’s what Harry asked for, though - for his birthday sex he’d wanted Louis to tie him up and edge him until he couldn’t fucking take it anymore, and Louis was of course more than happy to oblige. After reading that dusty old book Zayn got them from the library, though, Louis is thoroughly prepared this time - he’s got a bottle of water waiting on the bedside table and lotion if the rope rubs against Harry’s wrists where he’s tied to the bed and all the cuddles in the world ready for his birthday boy.

Stan’s dolphin swims through the door and over to Louis a second later, just after Louis puts more of his weight back on Harry’s face and pulls his arse cheeks apart, making Harry moan and tongue messily at his hole.

“Yeah, you asked for an hour - it’s been  _two._ S’almost dinnertime.”

Harry groans underneath Louis, kicking his legs out weakly and whining pitifully when all Louis does is lean forward and pet over his abs, still ignoring his dribbling cock.

“Y’hear that, babe?” Louis asks in amazement, wondering where the time went and even  _more_  how Harry’s managed to hold out this long. “We’ve been doing this for two hours, can you believe that?”

Harry mumbles something like _“Wanna come”_  but it gets muffled against Louis’s hole, and he kicks his feet out again as he pushes his tongue inside Louis’s arse, making Louis squeak and rock back on his face.

“Yeah? Wanna come? You’ve been so good holding out for me like this,” Louis murmurs, trying not to fall forward from how good it feels. “Let me tease you and play with you as much as I wanted.”

Something that sounds suspiciously like a sob tears out of Harry’s throat and vibrates against Louis’s entrance. Harry’s cock is a dark, dark red, verging on purple, and it’s all drippy and messy where precome has smeared around the head. Louis reaches out a finger and drags it over Harry’s slit, and Harry’s entire body jolts so hard that he almost bucks Louis off of his face.

Louis shudders and conjures another Patronus while he still has his wits somewhat about him. “Give us ten, then you c-can come up.”

As soon as he sends the stag away, Louis draws the curtains to the four-poster bed with his wand and then drops it on the sheets, using his hands to grip his own arse cheeks and pull them apart so Harry can get deeper inside.

“Get me off by the time they get back up here and I’ll let you come,” he tells Harry, grinding back against his face and watching as another drop of precome beads out of Harry’s cock. Fuck, Harry loves this so  _much._  “If not we’ll have to wait until after dinner.”

Louis might be bluffing - actually _,_ he’s  _definitely_  bluffing, because even _he_ isn’t dominant or cruel enough to sit idly by and make Harry suffer through a meal like that - but it makes Harry go  _wild,_  squirming around on the bed and licking even more enthusiastically into Louis’s hole. 

Louis starts to circle his hips, grinding back on Harry’s tongue and throwing his head back in bliss as Harry licks into him and presses sucking kisses against his hole.

“Yeah, like that,  _ohhh._ Want me to touch you?”

He feels Harry nod, making a pitiful little noise of assent as his tongue pushes further inside. Louis grins and leans down a bit, forcing Harry to change the angle, and flicks one fingertip over the head of Harry’s cock just to feel him shudder, see his toes curl. Finally, he leans down a bit more and licks at the precome pooled on Harry’s stomach before taking just the tip of his cock into his mouth.

Harry moans against his hole and Louis jolts as the noise vibrates into him, but he tries to focus on getting Harry closer and closer to the edge but not letting him fall over. He sucks over the first couple inches of Harry’s dick, right where Harry is most sensitive, and tongues at his slit, swallowing the salty taste and moaning happily. Louis’s own cock is rubbing slickly over Harry’s collarbones and chest as he grinds back shamelessly, and it feels so good that Louis can only hope that he doesn’t come before he’s finished playing with Harry.

Harry feels thick and hot inside his mouth, and Louis watches carefully as Harry’s balls start to tighten against his body, feels when Harry’s cock starts to twitch, and a few seconds later Louis pulls off and sits back up just to watch Harry kick his legs out in despair as he’s denied the release he so desperately craves.

“Lou,  _please,”_  Harry cries, letting out a muffled wail and sounding out of his mind as he tries to keep his tongue moving and draw breath at the same time.

“Make me come,” Louis tells him again. “That’s all you have to do, baby, s’not that -  _oh,_ fuck, your tongue feels so good-”

Louis can feel himself getting closer and closer to his own peak as Harry keeps desperately working his tongue and panting hotly against his hole.  On a whim, he leans down and wraps a hand around Harry’s cock, stroking over it to see  _just_  how close he can get Harry. “Don’t come.”

Harry’s toes curl instantly, his thighs shaking as he tries to buck his hips up, maybe to shake Louis off or maybe to fuck up faster into his hand, and his chest starts to heave, rocking Louis steadily against his face.

“Gonna come,” Louis hears him mumble, and he grins at the panicked note in Harry’s voice. He grips a little tighter, keeping his strokes short and fast and watching Harry’s ab muscles contract as he twitches and squirms around.  “Gonna  _come,_ Lou, gnngh, I’m - oh god I’m coming-”

Louis lets go, and for a second he thinks he pushed too far, thinks Harry might actually be coming, but only a few drops of precome bead out of the head of his dick instead and Harry almost  _screams_  in frustration against him as his cock visibly twitches, his hips working up into empty air to try and find friction.  Harry’s wailing  _Lou, Lou_  over and over again and it’s so fucking  _hot_  that Louis is helpless against the urge to get a hand around himself and start jerking himself toward orgasm.

“So close, so close -  _inside,_  babe, please,” he pants, and the next second later Harry’s gasping and pressing his tongue back inside Louis’s hole, fucking his tongue in and out like he’s starving for it, and the way he’s still kind of whining even with his tongue inside Louis’s arse brings Louis even closer to the edge.  Louis looks down the length of Harry’s torso, at his flushed nipples that Louis had spent long minutes playing with and pinching, at his painful-looking hard cock and the sweat that’s starting to line his abs, at his long legs that he can’t seem to keep still - and Louis gets this absolute  _headrush_  of power and trust and love that’s so intense he almost collapses.

He comes just like that, whining as he spills over his hand and grinds down on Harry’s tongue. He’d been holding out for as long as Harry has, really, he just hadn’t been teasing himself, and he comes for so long that he’s shaking and gasping for air by the time he’s finished.

Louis is drawn back into his senses when Harry starts to buck his hips up again and it becomes clear he’s trying to say something. Louis climbs off of him with weak, shaking thighs and Harry immediately bursts into a litany of, “Please, I - please, need to come, ‘ve been so good-”

“You have,” Louis rasps, still trying to maintain control of himself like his brain didn’t just melt out his ears.

“And they - th-they haven’t gotten back yet, I - did it, Lou,  _please.”_

Louis looks up at Harry and - god, he looks absolutely  _destroyed._ His normally full lips are now obscenely puffy and red, there’s spit all over his chin and cheeks, and his curls are matted to his forehead with sweat, and his -  _eyes,_ his eyes don’t even look like his own anymore, like he’s possessed or doesn’t know quite where he is.

“Please please  _please-”_

“Shh,” Louis shushes him, smiling softly as Harry bites mindlessly at his own lip. “I’ve got you, gonna make you feel so good.”

His brain whirls as he tries to figure out how he’s going to make Harry come, and then he settles on the cruelest option because Harry had _specifically_  asked Louis earlier to make him forget his own name, and who is Louis to deny the birthday boy of anything that he wants?

Louis reaches out a hand and walks his fingers gently down Harry’s abs, eventually settling two of his fingertips over the head of Harry’s cock and rubbing lightly over it, just barely applying any pressure at all. “Think you can come like this?”

Harry’s breathing picks up and he looks wildly up at Louis, but he’s already rutting his hips up like he can’t even help it. “Yeah, I can -  _oh,_ please, don’t stop, please don’t stop-”

“Not going to stop,” Louis tells him, his heart pounding as he watches Harry try to take his pleasure from the maddeningly light touches of Louis’s fingers. “There you go, that’s it.”

Harry throws his head back and groans loudly, his hips moving faster and more powerfully with every thrust up. Louis bites his lip and just watches him, feeling a tug of arousal in his tummy even though he just came.

Harry keeps crying “don’t stop, don’t stop,” his words increasing in volume until finally his back arches and he lets out a guttural moan as he starts to come, his cock spurting out over his stomach. Once he sees Harry’s eyes cross a little from how hard he’s coming, Louis takes pity on him and wraps his hand completely around Harry’s dick, stroking him fully through it instead of just teasing him and marveling at just how  _much_  come is pooling on his boyfriend’s stomach.

When it’s finally over, Harry doesn’t make any noise, just settles back into the bed and stares upward like he can’t even believe what just happened to him. Now that Louis’s read that surprisingly informative book Zayn lent him, he knows just what Harry needs when he’s like this.

First, he grabs his wand and uses  _Scourgify_ for the mess, Vanishes the silk ties tying Harry’s wrists to the upper two columns of the four-poster, then fans over Harry’s sweaty body a couple of times to help him cool off before un-twisting the covers and laying down beside him, drawing the sheets over them both.

“Hey, love,” he whispers. Harry’s mouth quirks up a little and he nuzzles in, curving his body closer to Louis as he brings his arms down clumsily, like he’s trying them out for the first time. “How’re you feeling?”

“Mmph,” Harry mumbles, burying his head against Louis’s shoulder.

Louis smiles. “M’just gonna reach over to get some water for you.”

Harry makes a small unhappy noise and clings tighter as Louis leans over him, pushing his hand through the drawn curtains and feeling around on the bedside table until he finds the bottle of water he’d set there earlier and draws it back into the warm, secure space of their bed. Louis uncaps it and asks, “Can you drink some of this for me, Haz?”

Harry blinks his eyes open and untucks his face from Louis’s neck. His movements are slow, but he does seem grateful for the water, drinking about a quarter of the bottle before flopping back down on the pillow and murmuring his thanks. Louis feels something big and gripping and warm welling up in his chest, but before he can think too much about it, the door to their dormitory opens and he hears Stan shout, “I hope both of you are decent!”

“Everything’s covered,” Louis informs him through the curtain, wedging the water bottle under the covers and cuddling Harry closer.

The next second he hears three pairs of feet scuffle into the dormitory that they’d been banned from for the last several hours.

“Merlin, it smells like sex in here,” Max George complains. Louis giggles.

“I should hope so,” replies Stan. “Otherwise just we got sexiled for nothing. You two coming down for dinner? We’re about to leave in a minute.”

Louis doesn’t even need to look at Harry again to know that Harry isn’t at all ready to even sit upright, much less interact with others or walk to the Great Hall. “No, I think we’re gonna grab something from the kitchens in a couple hours. You lot go on.”

Max snorts again as the three boys continue to putter around, presumably gathering whatever it was that they  _absolutely_  needed to retrieve before dinner.

Finally, when they seem to be heading out, Tom Parker asks, “Can I bring you anything back from dinner, Louis?”

Louis just barely stops himself from laughing out loud at the simpering boy. “No, I’m - thanks, Tom, I’m good.”

“Alright, we’re off,” he hears Stan say. “See you lovebirds later.”

The feet scuffle off again and, a second later, the door to the dormitory closes, leaving Louis and Harry alone again once more.

Louis remembers back in autumn and even much of last school year, when he and Harry would do things like this and then continue to go about their business without sometimes so much as a cuddle afterward. He remembers how  _he_  was affected that one time that they switched roles, when Harry left the next morning and Louis had felt literally the worst he’d ever felt for  _days_  afterward, and wonders if Harry had experienced some form of that every time they’d done this before, if that was  _normal_  for Harry - or worse, if Harry thought  _that_  was supposed to be normal.

He looks down at Harry, at his closed eyes and mouth curved into a drowsy smile. Louis feels his heart clench tightly at the thought that he could’ve been hurting Harry over and over without knowing it - and without Harry knowing that he was  _being_  hurt.

Louis drops a kiss to Harry’s forehead and resolves then and there that he’s going to make up for all of those times somehow beyond the dozens of apologies he’s already given. “I love you,” he murmurs.

Harry opens his eyes and turns again to look up at him, and as Louis stares into his eyes he can’t help notice how dazed and euphoric Harry looks.

“Love you too,” Harry rumbles eventually, the words slow like molasses.

“How’re you feeling?” Louis asks.

Harry frowns, like it’s taking a lot of effort for him to think about concepts and put them into words.

“Take your time,” adds Louis.

Eventually, Harry decides on, “Comfy. But - heavy.”

Louis nods, still mentally berating himself for not checking on Harry like this all the other times they’d done this. “Want some more water?”

Harry considers this, then shakes his head. “Not now. But could - could we just stay like this a little longer?”

“Of course,” says Louis. “We can stay like this as long as you want, I’ve got you.”

Harry smiles at him again before closing his eyes and nuzzling into Louis’s chest. For some absurd reason, Louis almost feels like crying, but for the first time in a very long time it’s because he’s so bloody  _happy_  he isn’t sure he’s able to contain it all inside.

xxx

“Three… two… one…  _happy birthday!”_

The cheers emanating from their corner of the common room draw the attention of the rest of the Slytherins lounging about as Louis, Stan, Eleanor, and Jesy clap loudly and smother Harry with hugs. Eighteen isn’t  _as_  big of a birthday in the Wizarding world as seventeen is, but it still means that someone is legal in every sense of the word now and is definitely a cause for celebration.

“Do you feel any different?” Jesy asks Harry excitedly, even though the only difference between now and a minute ago was the clock striking midnight.

“Not really,” says Harry, but he’s beaming nonetheless, especially when the rest of the Slytherins start to wander over to wish him a happy birthday. Eventually, Harry gets up so that he can carry on conversation with a few of them, and Louis sits back and resigns himself to losing track of Harry for at least fifteen minutes.

He shrugs at Eleanor, who grins in understanding.

“Have you got any plans for his birthday today?” she asks him quietly.

“Well, I got him a necklace to match the one he got me for  _my_  birthday,” says Louis, thumbing at the stag necklace he’s taken to wearing ever since he and Harry agreed to be in a committed relationship. “And I was  _planning_  on taking him out for a nice dinner in Wizarding London - I even had a reservation at the Phoenix Grill - but now that everyone knows our faces and recoils whenever they see me, I don’t think going out for dinner is such a great idea, considering how the last one went.”

Eleanor nods in sympathy.

“So I think we’re just going to venture around Muggle London instead for the day,” Louis continues, “maybe do some shopping on Oxford Street, and then when we find a Muggle restaurant that looks nice I’ll just Confund the maitre d’ into thinking we had a reservation.”

“You’re terrible!” Eleanor squeaks, but she’s laughing.

“And then this is the best part,” Louis continues excitedly, trying to keep his voice down so Harry doesn’t hear, “after we have dinner, I’m Apparating us to his mum’s house for cake and presents, and I got Gemma to agree to come home for the weekend too.”

“Aww,” coos Eleanor. “Now that you two have finally decided to be boyfriends you aren’t doing things by halves, are you?”

“Not a chance,” says Louis.

Just then, Harry rejoins them, his eyes bright as he snuggles back into Louis’s side. He’s been slightly clingy all night, even after he’d assured Louis that he felt good enough to get out of bed, shower, and go downstairs to get something to eat, and Louis wraps a protective arm around him as he pulls him in close.

“How are you feeling?” he asks Harry softly.

Harry smiles back. “Brilliant. I - brilliant. I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” Louis replies, feeling warm and happy all over. “We should get to bed soon, though, because as it turns out we’ve got places to be and people to see tomorrow, Styles.”

“Really?” Harry asks, his eyes wide. “Like, outside of the castle?”

Louis nods. “Zayn said we could use his Floo and everything. C’mon, up, let’s get to bed!”

Harry still looks a bit dazed when Louis hauls him up, but Louis isn’t sure if it’s from happiness and excitement or from their earlier activities. Either way, a good night’s sleep definitely won’t hurt, and neither does the natural, confident way Harry intertwines their fingers as the two of them walk up the stairs to their dormitory.

xxx

The next day, Harry’s actually the one that wakes  _Louis_ up, and he’s excited as a child on Christmas morning since he has absolutely no idea about Louis’s plans for the day - Louis’s only told him that there  _are_  plans. 

“Time s’it?” Louis asks sleepily, trying to pull Harry back under the sheets.

“It’s almost eleven,” Harry replies excitedly. “I don’t want to sleep my whole birthday away!”

“Shit, I didn’t mean to sleep this late,” mumbles Louis. He manages to sit up after a few tries and looks over at Harry, who’s sitting on the other side of the bed like an attentive puppy. “You feeling alright?”

Harry nods. “I feel really, really good.”

Louis smiles, shaking the last vestiges of sleep off as he leans across the bed to peck Harry on the lips.  “Be sure to tell me if you don’t, though,” he says as he gets out of bed and stretches, “because today, young Harold, is all about you.”

Harry beams at him and stands up too. They almost trip over Dusty on their way to the shower, who’s apparently come to greet Harry for his birthday. She winds between his legs and meows until he picks her up and nuzzles into her white fur happily.

After they shower and get dressed, Louis sends Harry to go wait in the Slytherin common room while he “gets a surprise ready.” Besides shrinking the wrapped parcel of Harry’s necklace small enough that Louis can fit it in the pocket of his jeans, the “surprise” really entails Louis frantically tearing over to his own bed and shaking his pillowcase out to get the last of his winter savings, which he’d started hoarding since Christmas to spend on this single day.  He counts it all up and it comes out to just over twenty-five Galleons.

“Shit,” Louis swears under his breath. He’d thought he had more, but hopefully that’s going to be enough. He hasn’t had to use Muggle money since last summer, so he isn’t quite aware of the current conversion rate, but if it comes down to it, Louis might have to use  _Gemino_ to duplicate the Muggle money and stretch what he has. He’s not proud of that, but it’s not like he has any other options besides borrowing money from Harry to take Harry out for his  _own birthday_.

He pockets the twenty-five Galleons and heads downstairs, taking Harry’s hand and leading him out of the common room.

“I can’t believe you have  _surprises_  for me,” says Harry excitedly.

Louis smiles but says apologetically, “I had some of them planned for a while, but, um, after last weekend I figured it might be better to go into Muggle London so we could get some peace and quiet.”

“Oh, from all the reporters?”

Louis nods.

“Makes sense,” says Harry with a sigh. “We’re proper celebrities now, for all the wrong reasons.”

It’s true, according to those of Louis’s friends who still read the _Daily Prophet._ Luckily, before the story had broken last Monday, Louis had taken the liberty of informing many of his friends about the poisoning incident at Madam Puddifoot’s, usually leaving out the reason _why_ the poisoning was attempted but making sure everyone around school knew that Louis had an experimental potion with him that he was able to use as an antidote – _not_ that he was carrying an antidote with him that was specific to the poison.

Louis squeezes his hand. “S’alright, though, we’re not Muggle famous, so I thought we could just wander around London and get into trouble for a few hours. And then we’ll have dinner and then you’ll get your surprise.”

“Yaaaayyy,” Harry smiles, leaning over to nuzzle into Louis’s neck as they walk to Zayn’s common room. “Best boyfriend ever.”

Louis still gets butterflies in his tummy whenever Harry uses that word. “Hope you’re not counting yourself, love.”

Harry snorts. “I didn’t take you out to London for  _your_ birthday.”

“Yeah, but we decided to be boyfriends on my birthday. That was pretty sweet.”

They both laugh, but when Louis looks over at Harry the other boy still looks somewhat guilty. “Hey, I’ll tell you what, you can make it up to me on Valentine’s Day.”

“Oh, nice,” says Harry, sounding happy. “I’m definitely gonna do that though, like - it’ll be so sappy you won’t know what hit you.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhmm,” Harry nods as they reach the portrait concealing the entrance to Zayn’s common room. “I’m gonna romance you so hard.”

Louis snorts but blushes all the same, then clears his throat and says, “Doxy Eggs,” to the portrait of the Auror, which swings open in response.

Zayn’s sitting in one of the big chairs by the fireplace when they enter the common room. He looks over to them and smiles.  “Happy Birthday, Harry!”

“Thanks, Z,” Harry replies, accepting the hug Zayn gives him once they’re all by the fireplace. “Where’s Liam?”

“He’s out on the pitch training,” says Zayn.

“In this weather?” Louis asks incredulously. “It’s  _never_  going to be this cold during Quidditch season, he’s mental.”

Zayn shrugs. “I tried to tell him that, but he says that he has to be prepared for anything.”

“What a Boy Scout,” Louis scoffs.

Zayn and Harry both look at him strangely.

“A what?” Harry asks.

“Ugh, forget it. Muggle thing,” Louis waves it off. “Speaking of Muggle things, we’re off to London to enjoy our Saturday instead of doing - what is that?”

“Arithmancy,” Zayn says sadly, gesturing to the parchment and books piled onto his chair. “And I  _know_  it’s Saturday, but I’ve gotten, like, really behind on a lot of my work."

"Is that so?" asks Louis, smirking.

Harry giggles. "Why, 'cause you've been too busy getting behind someone else?"

"Harry!"

Harry and Louis both snicker.

"I let you use my Floo and this is the thanks I get," Zayn grumbles, but it looks like he's fighting a smile. "I even got you a present, too, but now you're making me reconsider. Might just keep it for myself."

"Noooo," Harry whines.

Zayn laughs. "I'm just kidding." He takes a small box off of one of the end tables and hands it to Harry. "Here you go."

Louis watches as Harry takes off the lid and immediately grins, his cheeks dimpling even as they blush. "What is it?" Louis asks.

Instead of answering, Harry simply shows him the box - it turns out to be a pair of pink fuzzy handcuffs nestled in a few sheets of tissue paper.

"Zayn!" Louis gasps. "All you got me were shot glasses!"

"Which we made excellent use of last weekend," Harry points out. "Thanks, Z, this is awesome."

"You're welcome," says Zayn. "They were in the gag gifts section of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, but I figured you might get some actual use of out them, you know?"

They all laugh.

"We should probably leave them here for now, though," Louis points out. "Unless we want to stroll around Oxford Street carrying pink handcuffs."

"Is that where you guys are going?" Zayn asks, moving toward the fireplace and getting his wand out to light it.

"Yeah," says Louis. "We have to stop by the Leaky Cauldron first so I can exchange to Muggle money, and then I figure we can just take the Tube wherever we want to go."

"Oooh, yay," Harry exclaims.

Louis knew Harry would enjoy that; since he mostly grew up in a Wizarding household, he's only taken public transportation a few times in his life, and it never ceases to fascinate him.

"Are those those underground trains?" asks Zayn.

"More or less."

"Nice." Zayn holds out a small jar with green Floo powder inside. "I always thought those things were bloody confusing, but Muggles seem to have an easy time of it for some reason."

"To be fair, Muggles would probably be confused by, you know, teleporting," Louis points out, taking a handful of Floo powder.

Harry does the same. "So, the Leaky Cauldron?"

"The Leaky Cauldron," Louis nods.  "Thanks for your help, Z."

"No problem. Hope you guys have fun," says Zayn.

Harry smiles gratefully at Zayn, his cheeks still pink from his birthday present. Louis wonders when they'll get the first opportunity to use them, but before he can think much more about the handcuffs Harry's throwing his handful of Floo powder into the fireplace, stepping in, and saying, "The Leaky Cauldron."

He vanishes in a puff of green sparks.

"Don't bother leaving your Floo network open tonight," Louis tells Zayn once Harry's gone. "I'm surprising Haz with a stay over at his mum's house in Cheshire. If you could just open it back up, like, tomorrow afternoon, that'll be fine."

"Will do," says Zayn. He smiles at Louis, his eyes kind. "I'm really happy for you guys, Lou."

Louis smiles back. "Me too."

He gives Zayn a quick one-armed hug, then uses his other hand to throw the Floo powder into the fire. He steps in, watching the green flames lick at his clothes without consequence, and says, "The Leaky Cauldron!"

Only a few unpleasant seconds later, Louis finds himself thrown out onto the mat of the Leaky Cauldron's fireplace. Harry's there to help him up, and as Louis dusts himself off he makes sure his face is as bundled up and covered as it can be, and quickly suggests that Harry do the same so they can avoid being recognized.

The din of conversation is loud around them as the two make their way over to the corner of the pub, where an old Galleon-Pound exchange machine is still in use.

"You can wait here," Louis tells Harry when they're a few yards away. "It won't take but a minute."

"Okay," Harry shrugs.

Louis doesn't exactly want Harry to see how much money he's putting into the machine, in case he has to double some of it later. After he puts in his twenty-five Galleons and pulls a large golden lever, the machine makes a whirring noise for a few seconds before dispensing seven twenty-pound notes, a ten-pound note, and a two-pound coin. Louis does some quick mental math and notes that he has to make 152 pounds last the entire day, which includes their dinner, shopping, and any sweets or tea they happen to purchase before their meal.

He shoves the money in his pocket, figuring he'll do what he has to do if it comes down to it, and pastes a big smile on his face before turning back to his boyfriend. This day is all about Harry, after all, and nothing's going to stop Louis from doting on him.

"Ready to go?" he asks Harry, looping his arm through the other boy's and steering them toward the door that exits out onto the streets of Muggle London. "I think there's a Tube stop somewhere near here, we can take it over to Oxford Street."

"Best day ever," says Harry, leaning over to kiss Louis on the cheek as the two of them make their way into the brisk February air and noisy bustle of Muggle London.

Louis takes a quick look around before he realizes something. "Oh, shit, I didn't realize - we're already really, really close to Oxford Street. We don't actually, um,  _need_ to take the Tube anywhere."

He winces and glances over at Harry, who's pouting at him.

"We could.... just ride around on the Tube for a little bit anyway?" Louis offers.

Harry smiles. "We don't  _have_ to, like - I know it sounds silly, I just love seeing all the different people get off and on the train at every stop. Plus the way the doors open and close is really cool."

"Alright, weirdo," says Louis, tugging him toward the Tottenham Court Road station sign he can see in the distance.

"Hey!"

"You have to admit it's a little weird," says Louis, squeezing Harry's hand. "But it's your birthday, so two Underground day-passes coming right up.”

xxx

They end up riding the Tube aimlessly for nearly forty-five minutes before Harry gets his fill of people-watching (and playing footsie with Louis as older couples beam at how cute they are), and at that point Louis figures it's just quicker to Apparate back to Oxford Street rather than take the Tube back from whatever random stop they got off at.

Once they arrive back at the busy shopping area, Louis asks Harry what he wants to do.

"I usually just like window shopping," says Harry, looking around. His eyes are shining with happiness, his lips and cheeks pink-red from the cold. "But it's a bit cold out to do that all day."

"We could get hot chocolate," Louis offers. "Or-"

He discreetly raises his wand up and casts a Warming Charm around the two of them, the heat bubble expanding and shrouding them in relief from the bitter air. On either side of them, passing Muggles glance up and look around strangely as they walk quickly through the Warming Charm's field and can’t comprehend the temperature change.

“We could still get hot chocolate,” Harry offers, rubbing up and down his arms and then doing the same to Louis’s to help warm their limbs back up. “With all the marshmallows in it.”

Louis makes a retching noise. “This is like every sappy Muggle romcom I’ve watched over the summers.”

“Like that one we watched at your house last summer? It was called Love Actually, I think,” Harry says, grabbing Louis’s hand as they start elbowing their way through the crowded sidewalk.

“That one counts,” says Louis. “I’m surprised you remembered, actually, because if I remember correctly we weren’t exactly paying a lot of attention to the film.”

Harry bursts out laughing. “I caught bits of it, it seemed pretty good. If we watch it again maybe I’ll remember more of it if my dick’s not halfway down your throat.”

An elderly Muggle woman huffs at them in shock, and Louis almost shrieks in laughter as the two of them take off running down the sidewalk, their hands still joined as they race away in embarrassment and glee.

Over the next four hours, Louis and Harry spend a lot of time window shopping and wandering around Harrod’s, stopping occasionally for hot chocolate with extra whipped cream or a pastry.  When Louis notices Harry paying extra attention to the racks of winter hats in one of the shops, he impulsively offers to buy him a beanie.

“Yours is looking a bit ratty,” Louis tells him. “Just a little bit.”

“Heeeyyy,” Harry protests.

(He seems to agree, though, because he lets Louis buy him a clean, soft periwinkle one.)

When it’s just past five, the sky starts to get a bit darker, and Louis realizes he should probably start looking for a relatively nice place for them to eat. They’ve wandered off a bit from the main shopping street at this point, and Harry’s just humming contentedly along next to Louis, wearing his new beanie pulled on over his old one.

“Are you getting hungry?” Louis asks him.

“A bit,” says Harry, pulling his coat a little tighter around himself with his free hand.  “Not, like, especially but -  _oh,_ fuck, that smells good. Maybe I’m hungrier than I thought.”

Louis smells it too now, the rich garlic and spices of Italian food. It makes his stomach rumble even though he’d had a croissant not an hour earlier. “We could go there, if you want. It smells delicious.”

They’re approaching the front of the restaurant now, and it looks a bit fancier than Louis’d had in mind price-wise but the way Harry’s eyes light up at the outdoor menu makes Louis resolve to duplicate his money if he has to.

“I dunno, it looks kind of expensive,” says Harry quietly, even though Louis can practically  _see_  the way his mouth is watering. 

“We’re dressed fine for it, s’not like we’re sloppy or anything,” says Louis. “Although you’ll have to take both your hats off.”

Harry laughs but then says, “But, like, it’s not… it’s not too much money?”

Louis feels his cheeks flame; Harry’s always been a bit more well-off than Louis has, and it’s never been a huge issue unless they were going out to do something, in which case Harry has almost always paid for Louis and shrugged it off like it was nothing. But it’s Harry’s bloody  _birthday,_ Louis isn’t going to - fuck no. “No, I got it, it’s fine. Your special day, right, babe?”

“Lou,” Harry coos, smiling impossibly wide.

“C’mere, let’s go in,” says Louis.

Inside the restaurant, the waiting area is packed with people - it looks like a pretty popular place. Luckily, Louis has magic on his side, and he walks up to the hostess who seems to be in charge. “Welcome to Fabrizio Restaurant,” she greets them. “How can I help you?”

“Hi, we have a reservation for 5:30 under Smith,” he tells her. “We’re here a little early, but we were hoping we might be able to get seated now.”

She begins to flip through her book of names, but before she can realize that they’re not on the list, Louis discreetly pulls out his wand and whispers,  _“Confundo.”_

The hostess’ eyes glaze over a bit before returning back to normal. “Yes, of course, Mr. Smith. I’ll get you seated the moment a table opens up.”

“Thank you,” Louis says, trying not to giggle. Confunding people is always so much fun.

“Did you just Confund her?” Harry hisses as they move off to the side.

“The place is packed, H, we weren’t gonna get a table otherwise,” Louis laughs.

“You really know how to treat a guy,” says Harry, but he’s giggling as he says it, and he ends up kind of half-pressing Louis into the wall as they try to stay out of the way of entering and exiting customers.  He presses a kiss to Louis’s neck moments later before he pulls away, one that makes Louis shudder and heat up a bit before he remembers that they’re in a nice restaurant.

They get seated within the next minute, and their waiter, John, comes only two minutes after that to introduce himself. When John discovers it’s Harry’s eighteenth birthday, he immediately offers his congratulations.

“Can I get you two any drinks to start you off?”

“You want a glass of wine, Haz?” Louis asks Harry.

“Uh, sure, why not,” says Harry. He starts to flip frantically through the wine menu. “But I, uh, I’m not really sure what to get.”

“Well, we’re both only wine novices, after all,” says Louis. He turns to John. “What would you recommend for two eighteen-year-olds who haven’t yet cultured their palettes?”

John laughs, then promises to bring them two glasses of one of his favorite wines. 

As Louis watches Harry flip through the dinner menu across from him, he’s suddenly transported back in his mind to less than a month ago, to their very  _first_  attempt at a nice date like this, and how horrible it went. This time is going to be different, though, he knows - nobody knew they had a reservation here, and Louis introduced himself to the hostess under a fake name. Plus this is a Muggle restaurant, the last place anyone would think to look.

Harry glances up from his menu and notices Louis watching him. “Whatcha thinking about?”

“Just looking at you,” Louis lies, giving him a smile. “You’re pretty cute.”

Dinner goes off without a hitch; the red wine John brings them ends up going well with what they order, which is herb and cranberry-crusted lamb medallions for Harry and roast guinea fowl with marsala sauce for Louis. Before that, they have prawns with bacon and asparagus for an appetizer.

When John offers them a dessert menu, Louis is quick to decline because of the cake waiting for Harry at Anne’s house. 

“Just the check, please,” he says.

When John leaves, Harry quirks an eyebrow at Louis. “Never known you to turn down sweet things, Lou.”

Louis sticks his tongue out at him.  “S’part of the surprise you’re gonna get.”

“Oooh, more surprises?”

Louis nods. He thumbs at the miniature present in his pocket - the giftwrapped, magical doe necklace - then takes it out and Enlarges it under the table with his wand. 

“This is one of them,” he says, drawing it up into view and handing it to Harry.  “Happy birthday, love.”

“Looou,” Harry whispers quietly, thumbing at the gold wrapping paper.

“Open it,” Louis prods him, suddenly nervous and excited to see Harry’s reaction.

Harry glances up at him in a shy sort of glee before carefully starting to undo the wrapping paper. When he gets down to the little jewelry box, his hands shake for a few seconds before he opens it.  Louis watches his face carefully, watches his eyes gleam as he sees the silver doe shining back at him from where it’s nestled amongst the packaging.

“It’s, um, it’s like the one you got me,” Louis says after a few seconds, when Harry doesn’t say anything. “It jumps around when you pick it up, and stuff.”

“It - it matches yours?” asks Harry. His voice sounds strange.

“Yeah,” says Louis. He unhooks his own stag necklace and holds it out for Harry to look at. “I thought it was cute that our Patronuses, um - sort of went together.”

Harry takes the doe necklace out of the box and holds it in his palm, close to Louis’s, and immediately the two silver animals start to animate.  The stag in Louis’s hand starts to leap around excitedly, and Harry’s doe kicks shyly at his hand and bows its head.

When Louis looks back up at Harry, his heart pounding in his chest, he sees that Harry’s eyes look suspiciously wet. “Do you - do you like it?”

“Are you kidding?” Harry chokes out, laughing wetly. “This is - Merlin, this is so fucking cute, what in the  _world.”_

“Am I romancing you so hard right now?” Louis asks, trying to lighten the mood even as he feels tears pricking at the corners of his own eyes as well.

“So hard,” Harry agrees, barking out another laugh as he draws the necklace back and fastens it around his own neck. Louis does the same. “I’ve got my work cut out for me on Valentine’s Day.”

Louis scoffs. “You don’t actually  _have_  to do anythi-”

“But I  _want_  to,” Harry cuts him off, “I just - you - thank you  _so much_ , Lou.”

“You’re welcome,” says Louis, wiping at his eyes just to make sure they look normal as John walks up with the check.

The meal, including the two glasses of wine, comes out to only 70 pounds, and Louis tries not to let out a visible sigh of relief at the fact that he doesn’t have to duplicate any money and feel bad about himself for the rest of the night. The gratuity is already included, so he leaves exact change inside the booklet and tells Harry, “Ready for the rest of your surprise?”

“There’s  _more?”_  Harry asks, standing up.

“Mhmm,” Louis agrees as they walk out of the restaurant and say goodbye to the hostess. It’s gotten even colder out now that the sun’s mostly down. “But it involves Apparating.”

“But you can’t Apparate back into Hogwarts,” says Harry with a frown.

“Good thing we’re not going to Hogwarts, then,” Louis says, holding out his hand and leading the two of them into a somewhat secluded alley where they can disappear without getting any weird looks. “D’you have everything?”

Harry nods, looking excited.

“Alright,” says Louis. “Try to keep all that fancy food down, Styles.”

As Harry laughs, Louis gets a grip on his wand with his free hand and closes his eyes, clearly picturing the front porch of Harry’s house.  Then, he starts to turn on the spot, concentrating very carefully as he feels himself getting pulled into nothingness and dragging Harry along with him.

Louis tries to keep his own advice in mind as they spin through the void, getting squeezed through invisible tubes several unpleasant times before finally landing on their feet right in front of Harry’s house.

Once they’ve both gotten over the nausea, Harry seems to realize where they are. “Are we - is that my-”

Louis grins and tugs him along to the front door while Harry continues to splutter. Anne had assured Louis she’d leave the front door open, and sure enough, it opens when he tries it.

“This is my house,” Harry says stupidly, like Louis isn’t aware of this.

“Know it is, babe,” says Louis, pulling Harry inside while the other boy drags his feet in surprise.

When they get into the kitchen, Anne and Gemma are waiting for them with a homemade birthday cake and big smiles on their faces. 

“There’s my birthday boy!” Anne greets them, looking fondly at the pair of them. “C’mere, sweetheart, I haven’t seen you in months.”

After a few seconds during which Harry seems incapable of processing how he ended up here, he rushes forward to greet them, burrowing into his mother’s embrace and making room for Gemma to join them a second later.

The hug lasts a long time, but Louis doesn’t feel uncomfortable or awkward at all - he knows this is the first time Harry’s seen his mum since the fall. He’d been able to downplay the poisoning enough that his mum was convinced not to come to Hogwarts and check on him, but that wasn’t because Harry didn’t want to see her so much as he didn’t want to worry her.

“Did you have your first legal Muggle drink?” Gemma asks Harry when they finally break apart and Louis hugs her and Anne in turn.

Harry nods. “A glass of wine.”

Gemma makes a face. “Well, hopefully you still have enough room for strawberries and cream cake. And we, um, we  _might_  have made multiple pitchers of margaritas.”

Harry lets out a whoop of excitement and barrels across the room to hug Louis instead, mumbling “best birthday ever” over and over before Louis finally manages to detach them with a giggle, squirming under the fond scrutiny of Anne and Gemma.

“I might have to wait a few moments for my stomach to settle from Apparating,” Louis tells Anne, “but I wouldn’t say no to a margarita while I wait.”

Three hours later, a good portion of the cake has been demolished and they’re well into the second pitcher of margaritas.  Louis is in the kitchen helping Anne wash up some of the dishes while Harry and Gemma play a rousing and tipsy game of Wizard’s Chess in the living room.

“You don’t use magic?” Louis asks Anne, after seeing her take a sponge to a bowl with her hands. “For washing the dishes, I mean.”

Anne shakes her head and hands the bowl to Louis to dry.  “I do sometimes when I’m short on time, but I find it relaxing to do things by hand when I can.  Gives you time to think about other things, and that sort of thing.”

“Makes sense,” Louis nods, just as he hears Harry roar  _“That was so not fair!”_  from the living room.

“Speaking of  _other things_ , I’ve been getting increasingly worried every day I read the  _Daily Prophet_ , Louis,” says Anne, starting to scrub another bowl.  “Did you know I’m allowing my only son to cavort about with a murderous liar? I must’ve failed as a mother, honestly.”

“Anne-”

“Relax,  _relax,_ Louis, I was only joking,” Anne laughs, handing Louis the next bowl.  _“Merlin,_ you should see your face, I’m - I’m sorry, that wasn’t very funny.”

She keeps snickering, though, and a thoroughly tipsy Louis joins her seconds later. After all, the whole ordeal  _is_  a bit ridiculous.

“Has it been bad? We unsubscribed from it a while ago,” says Louis.

“Only something about it every couple of days,” Anne tells him.  “The newest story is that you  _hired_  the man who actually put the poison in the coffee.”

“Christ,” mutters Louis.

“But I’m assuming no one’s found out any relevant information yet, or else they’d be reporting on  _that_  instead of conspiracy theories,” continues Anne.

Louis definitely has no plans to inform Harry’s family that he’s related to Voldemort, at least not now. Maybe, like, twenty or thirty years down the line. If that. “Yeah, I don’t think they’ve gotten anything useful out of the guy they caught.”

Anne shakes her head. “How horrifying, though. Right in Madam Puddifoot’s, you poor things.” She drops her voice, then, and asks, “Louis, can I ask you a question?”

Louis gulps, feeling a bit dizzy from the margaritas. “Sure.”

“And I want an honest answer,” says Anne, handing him a plate. “How… how bad was it?”

“The - poisoning?”

Anne nods. “Be straight with me.”

Louis gulps. “It was - Anne, he almost died.”

Harry’s mum doesn’t react outwardly, just keeps scrubbing a plate, but Louis expects that she was perhaps steeling herself for this very answer.

“But I’d been making a batch of experimental potion with Professor Malfoy earlier in the day, what we’d hoped was a universal antidote,” he continues hastily, “and I had a vial on me that I’d been meaning to give to Madam Pomfrey earlier in the day, but she’d gone home because her granddaughter was sick, so - so I still had it.”

Anne is silent for a few moments, so that the only sounds in the room are the running dishwater and Harry’s yells of “No way! No  _way,”_  from the living room as he and Gemma get up to who knows what.

“He just didn’t want to worry you,” Louis says eventually. “And I’m not looking forward to the chewing-out I’m getting once he finds out I told you the truth-”

“Shhh, shh, I’m not going to tell him,” Anne chuckles, her eyes still sad. “Some part of me wanted to know, though, if the tabloids were exaggerating.”

“Well, they were exaggerating the part where I’m trying to seduce him and kill him,” Louis offers weakly.

Anne laughs in spite of herself.  “I should hope so! Oh, that’s something  _else_ I wanted to ask you,” she says, her eyes glinting as she rounds on Louis with new purpose.  “So you two were on a  _date,_ were you not?”

Louis swallows loudly. “Yeah.”

“Does this  _finally_  mean you’ve pulled your heads out of your arses and stopped fooling around?”

Louis barks out a laugh in disbelief.  _“Anne!”_

She just stares at him.

“...Yes. I - yeah,” Louis says eventually, blushing under her gaze.

Her eyes immediately soften, and she pulls him into a dish soap-y hug.  In that moment, Harry’s mum feels even more like family to Louis than she has over the last couple of years, and Louis sighs happily, thinking that he can definitely get used to this.

xxx

That night, after Louis is reasonably sure Anne has fallen asleep, he sneaks out of the guest bedroom, where he’d been set up, and tiptoes across the dark hall into Harry’s room.  Harry’s already in bed but he’s still awake.

“Hey,” Harry whispers, holding out his arms and making grabby hands at Louis.

“Hi,” Louis replies, climbing into bed and snuggling close. “Would’ve felt weird not sleeping next to you.”

“I know,” says Harry. He kisses Louis lightly on the lips and then they both settle in for a night of sleep in Harry’s childhood bed.

Just when Louis is starting to drift off, though, Harry speaks again. 

“I don’t have any idea how to thank you for today, Lou.  Other than saying thank you a million times. I just - today was  _perfect,_ and dinner was perfect, and seeing Mum and Gem, and staying here, just - I love you  _so_ much.”

Louis smiles.  “I love you too. That’s why I did all this, silly.”

Harry squeezes him almost too tightly. “You’d just better prepare yourself for Valentine’s Day, then. That’ll be your day.”

“It’s a day for both of us,” Louis protests.

Harry shakes his head. “Nope. You’re not allowed to do anything for me.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“Louis,” Harry whines, “c’mon, let me spoil you.”

Louis blushes. “Guess I can’t turn that down, can I?”

“Not a chance.”

xxx

Over the next week and a half, it seems like Harry’s taking the whole “spoiling Louis” business far too seriously, completely jumping the gun on Valentine’s Day, which falls on a Friday this year.  Louis protests the first couple of days, but by the Tuesday night before Valentine’s Day he’s completely basking in Harry’s attention, which at the moment involves getting fucked so hard that their heavy four-poster bed is knocking rhythmically against the stone dormitory wall.

“Fuck -  _fuck-”_

Harry’s kneeling, sitting back on his heels with Louis’s legs splayed out and draped over his thighs, and Louis is on his back staring up at him and trying not to pass out. Harry’s got a tight grip on his waist and is using it to pull Louis’s body onto his cock again and again, rocking forward so his dick catches Louis’s prostate with every thrust.

“Close,” Louis gasps out, clinging onto the bedsheets for dear life and throwing his head back with a cry as Harry nails his prostate head-on.

Harry grins and starts putting more force behind his thrusts so he can take one hand off of Louis’s waist and wrap it around Louis’s cock, bouncing wetly on his stomach. His hand is warm, his grip tight, and it only takes a couple of strokes before Louis is pushed over the edge. He feels himself clench around Harry’s pistoning cock as he shoots come all over his stomach and Harry jerks him through it and it’s so  _good_  that Louis’s eyes roll back in his head.

Harry doesn’t stop, though, keeps fucking Louis even after Louis’s done squeezing around his cock, and he keeps his grip on Louis’s dick, too, so that it slides through his fist every time Harry jolts Louis’s body back and forth with his hips.

“Hnngh,” Louis whines pitifully, his brain still fuzzy from his orgasm.

“Feel so good,” Harry breathes out.

His hand feels like fire where it’s wrapped around Louis’s cock and Louis tries to squirm away, oversensitive. He’s never  _not_  had a break after an orgasm and Louis doesn’t know what to think.

“Too much, too much,” he decides eventually, once every stroke of Harry’s hand starts to feel like sweet, prickly torture.

Harry seems to shake out of whatever sex-trance he’d fallen into and immediately lets go of Louis’s cock, slowing down the pace of his thrusts as well. As soon as he does, though, Louis regrets telling him to stop, because it had been too much but he’d - he’d  _liked_  it, for some reason.

“Wait,” he says once Harry moves to pull out, which is the  _last_  thing Louis wants.  “I’m - um - you c’n keep going.”

“Yeah?” Harry asks, sliding back in completely and lifting Louis’s body up a bit so he can stretch out and settle over him.  “Wanna make you feel good, wanna make you come over and over.”

Louis moans and wraps his legs around Harry’s torso, crossing his feet over Harry’s bum. 

Harry bends down to kiss him, then whispers against his lips, “D’you want that too?” as he starts to thrust forward again.

“Mhmm,” Louis mumbles. He wraps his arms around Harry’s neck and pulls him down for another kiss, feeling his sensitive cock brush up against Harry’s abs. It never got a chance to recover, never went soft, and it’s constantly bordering on too much even though Louis’s come is helping slick things up.  His arse feels sore and used and for some reason all he wants to do is ask for  _more, harder-_

“Tell me if it’s too much, though,” Harry murmurs, breaking Louis’s train of thought as his hips snap forward.

With his last coherent thoughts, Louis realizes how easy it could be to say “too much” even if he doesn’t  _mean_  it, so he asks, “Can I -  _oh,_ oh fuck - can I use Gryffindor?”

Gryffindor is their safeword.

Harry stops moving then, just holds himself over Louis as he looks down with wide, slightly scared eyes.  “Are you - are you sure?”  
Louis tugs lightly on one of Harry’s curls, trying to fuck down on his cock to get him to start moving. He understands why Harry might have reservations, because of what happened last time Harry was in charge like this, but -

“I trust you,” he says quietly, licking his lips to wet them and squirming around on the bed.

Harry’s eyes are huge but he nods, taking in a few heavy breaths before he starts to move again.  He drops his head to mouth at Louis’s neck, moaning quietly against his skin, and Louis gasps as Harry grinds in and stays deep, circling his hips and making Louis feel so  _so_  full.

“How many times should we go for?” Harry asks, propping himself up again and grinning down at Louis.

Louis bites his lip and closes his eyes when Harry grabs his cock again, smearing his come around and using it to help jerk him off. A moan bubbles up in his throat when Harry continues, “Three? Four?”

“Oh god,” Louis chokes out. They’re both starting to sweat, and his legs are slipping a bit from where they’re wrapped around Harry’s arse.

Harry notices and sits up til he’s on his knees, pausing only to maneuver Louis’s legs so they’re hooked over his arms before leaning back down and spreading Louis open even wider, holding him there.  Harry can fuck him harder like this when he’s braced on the bed, and he picks up a rhythm that soon has the bed knocking against the wall again, accompanied by the loud  _slaps_  of Harry’s hips against Louis’s arse.

“Yeah, yeah,” gasps Louis, powerless against the desire to wrap a hand around his dick, which has started to leak precome onto his belly again.

“No,” Harry bites out, “don’t - don’t touch yourself.”

Louis whines and throws his head back, taking his hand off his cock and bringing it up to pinch his nipple instead.  He’s trying to tamp down all the noises he can feel threatening to spill out of him from how good the wet slide of Harry’s cock feels inside him, but it’s definitely a losing battle.

“Harry,” he moans, using his other hand to start playing with his other nipple.

“Fuck, you’re so hot,” says Harry, hitching Louis’s legs up a bit further so he can change the angle. It’s an even better angle to hit Louis’s spot perfectly, and they both groan together as Louis’s back arches and he squeezes around Harry’s cock.  “Playing with yourself like that, babe, you’re -  _god,_ I’m close, you feel too good-"

“Please,” groans Louis, not even sure what he’s asking for.  His arse is sore and he’s oversensitive all over, feels like every inch of his skin is lit up with electricity, and he doesn’t ever want this to stop-

“Can you - c’n you come one more time for me - while I’m still inside you like this?” Harry gasps out, his face twisting as he fucks Louis harder and tries to hold off coming.

“Yeah, can,” Louis tells him, trying to angle his hips up and wishing he had the strength to lean up and lick the sweat off of Harry’s collarbones. He feels himself getting weaker and weaker as his orgasm builds inside him, every brush of Harry’s cock over his prostate driving him closer to the edge. “Oh god, don’t stop-”

"Never," promises Harry, grunting with exertion as his arms shake from the strain. He looks so fucking hot like this and he's making Louis feel so caged in and trapped and he  _loves_  it, wants so much more.

Harry pushes up a bit more with his arms so that Louis’s legs are completely spread, Louis’s feet waving with every thrust as he gets pounded, and one-two-three more thrusts are all it takes to send Louis over the edge, wailing as he comes for the second time in a row.  He squeezes his eyes shut as his legs try to twitch closed but can’t, and it almost hurts a little when his cock jerks and spurts all over his stomach.  Harry feels even bigger inside him like this, huge and hard, and only a couple seconds later he hears Harry give a soft groan before stilling above him as he comes inside him.

Louis is breathing hard and can’t figure out quite what to do with his hands, and he’s hyperaware of how wet and spent his cock feels where it’s lying against his belly. When he opens his eyes, though, Harry’s already shaking himself out of his post-orgasm stupor and leaning up, letting Louis’s legs fall down to the bed before carefully pulling out.

“Nngh,” Louis whines, making a pitiful little unhappy sound as Harry leaves him. He doesn’t want Harry to leave.

But Harry isn’t done - he just spares a second to look up at Louis, his eyes dark as he pushes Louis’s legs apart once more.

“That’s two,” he grins, before ducking down and burying his face in Louis’s arse.

Louis gasps and struggles a little, trying to squirm away from the insistent warm pressure of Harry’s tongue, but when Harry holds him firmly and just licks in deeper Louis finds himself getting a little hazy-headed from being held down.

Then he remembers that Harry just came  _inside him,_ that Harry’s licking his  _own come_  out of him, and Louis cries out loudly and fists his hands in Harry’s hair, holding him there and shuddering against his tongue. He tugs on Harry’s hair a bit and Harry groans, reaching up to grab Louis’s hands and then pinning them to his thighs, pushing both apart until Louis can’t move, can’t do anything to distract himself from Harry’s mouth all over him or make it less intense. He just has to take it.

“Harry -  _Harry,_ oh, fuck-” he’s just  _babbling_  and he doesn’t even know what he’s  _saying,_ lets out a little sob when Harry flattens his tongue and tickles it in broad licks around his hole before pointing it and pushing it back inside.

He tries to lift his hips up, to push back into Harry’s face, but Harry has him held so that he can’t move at all - all Louis can do is thrash his head around and yell and moan and try not to cry. His ears are ringing and his head is pounding, and he feels wet and messy and split open on Harry’s insistent tongue.

Harry wiggles his tongue a bit deeper and then moans quietly, the sound vibrating through Louis’s skin and driving him out of his mind.  He’s lost most of his words now, only moans and Harry’s name are left, and he’s worked up a sweat struggling but now he feels too weak to keep going, instead letting himself relax into the bed and cry quietly at the soft, maddening stimulation of Harry’s tongue.

Harry seems to notice that Louis is crying now, because he pulls away and looks up with concern. But that’s even  _worse_  because Louis was getting close again and now Harry’s not touching him  _anywhere_  and it just makes him cry harder.

“Lou? You okay?” he asks, rubbing his thumbs over Louis’s hands.

“Don’t stop,” Louis manages to choke out, letting his eyes slip shut and trying to bring his hips up closer to Harry’s face.

Harry doesn’t reply, but seconds later Louis’s eyes fly open in bliss again because Harry’s mouth is back where he wants it. Harry teases him with little kisses over his hole for what feels like  _ages,_ and no matter how much Louis incoherently begs him for  _more_  Harry doesn’t relent. Finally, after he’s managed to thoroughly drive Louis out of his mind, Harry pushes his tongue back inside, and Louis is so fucking exhausted that only his hands twitch from how good it feels.

Louis can feel himself climbing closer to his third peak and he’s a little scared, somewhere in his head, because he’s only ever done two in a row before and Harry just hasn’t given him a fucking break.  He tries to tell Harry that he’s close but he can’t seem to get his mouth to work, and his hands are shaking and so are his legs and he can feel his balls drawing up close to his body as Harry works him over with his tongue, and oh,  _fuck,_ he’s gonna come-

“Harry - Harry - o-oh my  _g-gnnungh-_ ”

Louis falls over the edge nearly screaming, feeling his cock jerk hard and trying to thrash away from Harry’s tongue as Harry licks him through his third orgasm. It actually  _does_  hurt this time but it feels so fucking good that Louis just cries even harder, shuddering and shaking as his cock pulses out just a few weak streams of come, barely  _anything._

He can’t stop shivering afterward, and every brush of the sheets on his skin feels like too much. When Harry draws away this time Louis doesn’t protest, just looks up at him and sees that he’s gotten hard again from eating him out.

“Holy shit,” Harry says quietly, giving his cock a few strokes as he looks down at Louis. “How’re you feeling?”

Louis’s hands are almost numb and he can’t quite find the strength to close his legs. “G-good.”

Harry grins. “You think you can do one more? There’s something I want to show you.”

Louis whimpers, feeling like a puddle on the sheets.  He nods weakly, closing his eyes and trying to get his breathing back to normal.

“You look so amazing like this,” Harry tells him, shifting the bed as he reaches over to their bedside table and rummages around for something. “Wanna see if - here, this is gonna seem a little weird at first, but when we were home Gemma showed me a spell to make my wand vibrate.”

Louis’s eyes fly open at that, suddenly squirming and nervous underneath Harry. He isn’t sure if he can take that much stimulation right now, but the hungry way Harry’s looking at him makes Louis want to try, even given how fucking exhausted he already is. He isn’t even sure if he can get hard again after glancing down at his soft cock.

Harry doesn’t seem phased, though, just grips his wand tightly and mutters,  _“Donomate.”_

Is this weird? This is probably weird. Louis doesn’t find himself caring at all, especially once Harry presses the wand against Louis’s thigh to let him get used to it and he can feel the soft vibrations traveling through his skin.

“Apparently it’s something that every witch knows about,” Harry continues conversationally, petting over the inside of Louis’s other thigh, “but Gems thought we could, uh, benefit from it too.”

He then takes the wand and pushes it right up against Louis’s hole, not hard enough to slip inside but enough that it makes Louis cry out and try to squirm away from it.

“No, you have to stay still,” says Harry, grabbing Louis’s hip and pulling him back down into the vibrations. Louis heaves out a breath and grabs big fistfuls of the sheets to try to ground himself, even as he feels like he’s about to snap and float away from the tickling pressure at his hole.

Harry holds him still until Louis stops squirming, until he’s just sniffling and whimpering and his cock is starting to get hard again even though it’s painful, and then Harry pushes just the tip of his wand inside.

Louis cries out then bites his lip so hard he thinks he might be drawing blood, but he doesn’t care because the vibrations are suddenly  _in_  him and all around him and he feels like his whole body is a live wire, like parts of him are fizzling away until there’s nothing left but the wand inside him teasing him and making his cock even harder. Then Harry twists it further inside, slipping it easily in through the slick mess of lube, come, and spit between Louis’s legs, and he doesn’t stop until Louis almost  _screams_  because his prostate is  _right there_  and Harry’s bearing down on it with the wand.

It’s so intense Louis feels like he might pass out from sheer sensitivity. He’s vaguely aware of Harry’s mouth moving, that Harry’s trying to ask him something, but Louis’s ears are ringing and he can’t hear what Harry’s saying for the life of him, so he just gives a little sob, closes his eyes, and starts to fuck himself down on the wand, wanting it deeper.

“You like that?” he hears Harry ask, feeling the wand start to move as Harry presses it slightly upward to put more pressure on his prostate.

Louis nods frantically, not sure what’s wrong with him but knowing that he never ever wants it to stop. He looks at Harry, sees his face twisted in concentration as he carefully moves the wand inside Louis, and manages to choke out, “Please.”

Harry looks up at him, licking his lips when he sees how flushed and sweaty Louis has gotten. “Want me to touch you?”

Louis nods frantically, feeling like someone’s stuffed his ears full of cotton.

“Y’have to keep still,” Harry tells him, taking his hand off of Louis’s thigh and wrapping it around his leaking cock instead.

It’s  _too much_  almost right away, like every nerve ending in Louis’s cock is on fire, but he wants to come more than anything now so all Louis does is wail and try not to twitch away from Harry’s grip.  He does squirm a little, though, which only serves to press the wand more firmly against his prostate, sending shockwaves of pleasure throughout his entire body. It’s not big, so it isn’t stretching Louis very wide, but he squeezes helplessly around it all the same.

“You should see yourself,” says Harry, increasing the pace of his hand and rubbing his thumb right under the head, “wanna have you like this all the time, Lou, oh my god.”

Louis is crying again, great sobs that wrack his whole body, but his hands remain firmly clenched in the bed sheets and he isn’t doing anything to stop Harry from touching him and driving him closer to the precipice once again. His heart feels like it’s going to beat right out of his chest, hammering against his ribcage as Harry uses his elbows to prop Louis’s legs open where they’d started to try and close.

When Harry leans down and licks over just the tip of Louis’s red, sore cock, Louis almost knees him in the face, but Harry holds him fast and grins up at him before sucking a couple inches into his mouth and prodding at Louis’s spot with his wand.

“Oh f-fuck,” Louis gasps, pinned to the bed as Harry sucks him off. When Harry draws back up and sucks as hard as he can Louis  _does_  scream then because it hurts so good he thinks he might claw his own skin off.

“Taste good,” Harry murmurs, licking his lips before going back down again, and Louis feels more tears drip down into his sweaty hair as he watches Harry’s sinful lips bob up and down.

“Please,” Louis shouts, his voice raw and wrecked, “please, m’gonna - don’t - no-”

“You don’t want to come?” asks Harry, licking teasingly over the tip and digging his tongue into the slit.

Louis’s hips fly up in shock but Harry pins them back down just as fast. He can’t decide  _what_  he wants, he doesn’t feel like he’s in a position to be deciding  _anything_  for himself-

“Hurts,” he ends up telling Harry, sniffling and moaning as Harry starts to thrust the vibrating wand in and out.

“I think you’ll feel better when you come, though,” says Harry, and -  _that’s_  it, that’s what Louis needs right now, he just needs Harry to tell him what to do.

Louis sighs happily and melts into the bed, not even trying to shy away from the wand in his arse and moaning when Harry gets his mouth back around him.  He feels himself finally starting to build toward the edge, and he’s scared because he knows it’s going to hurt even more than it already does and he’s not sure if he even has any come  _left,_ but he’s getting close and he can’t stop it, just lets Harry work him over.

“G-gonna,” he manages to choke out, ending the last syllable on a whine and kneading his hands in the sheets.

Harry just groans and sucks harder, going down til Louis hits the back of his throat, and that’s  _it_ for Louis, who orgasms with a garbled shriek as he clenches wildly down on the vibrating wand, keeping it pressed against his prostate.  Harry pulls off to stroke him through it, lets Louis moan and thrash around as much as he wants, and Louis’s mind goes completely blank for a few terrifying seconds as pleasure and pain seize him and short out his brain.

When it’s over, Louis feels like he’s floating, like he’s soaring, but he’s not scared at all because he knows Harry’s still there and is going to take care of him. He smiles dopily at the top of their bed, his eyes half-lidded, and listens to Harry murmuring spells that clean both his wand and Louis’s whole body off.

“You want some water?” he hears Harry ask hesitantly once everything is clean.

Louis shakes his head  _no,_ he doesn’t want water, he just wants to cuddle. His arms feel heavy when he tries to raise them to beckon Harry in, but Harry gets the picture and snuggles him in close. He’s still shaking a little, but Harry holds him until the shivers stop and Louis can somewhat see and hear again.

“That was amazing,” Harry murmurs quietly. “D’you know you didn’t come at all, the last time?”

“Hmm?” Louis asks. “I definitely  _did_  come the last time, think I would’ve noticed.”

Harry snickers. “No, I mean, like - you didn’t jizz at all. Nothing came out.”

 _“Shit,”_  says Louis. He tries to burrow closer but they’re already as close as they’re going to get. “You wore me out, Styles.”

They lay there for a few minutes quietly before Louis sleepily remembers something. “Wait, you didn’t - did you come again?”

Harry’s chest gets a little bit hotter against Louis’s cheek; he must be blushing. “Yeah, I, uh - after you came, the last time, it sort of made me, um. Didn’t really need to do much else to finish.”

Now it’s Louis’s turn to blush. “Fuck. Well, I was gonna offer to help you out, but-” he yawns- “s’probably for the best, ‘cause m’not sure how much I can move right now.”

“You should get some rest,” says Harry. “I’ll get us a nice shower in the morning.”

Louis feels warm all over knowing Harry is going to be there tomorrow when he wakes up. He feels like he’s on top of the fucking world with how happy he is, like it’s a headrush or something, and it’s  _amazing._ He tries to articulate this to Harry, but before he knows it his eyelids are slipping shut and he’s drifting off to sleep against Harry’s chest with a contented smile on his face.

xxx

The next morning Harry makes good on his promise, getting the shower ready for them and even giving Louis a massage afterward until Louis feels like he’s absolutely bursting with happiness. If this is Harry’s idea of spoiling Louis  _before_  Valentine’s Day, Louis can’t even  _imagine_  what Harry’s going to do on the actual day, which is only two days away.

In fact, the night before Valentine’s Day, Louis has some trouble falling asleep because he’s so excited. He feels like he usually does the night before his birthday, or the night before school starts in the fall. He tosses and turns, trying not to wake Harry, and eventually decides to get up for a wee and to maybe splash some warm water on his face to try and calm himself down.

Louis pulls on a pair of briefs just to make himself decent for the trip to the loo, then gets out of bed. Harry jolts awake when Louis gently wiggles out from between his arms, but Louis kisses him on the forehead and whispers that he’s just going to the loo, and before Louis is even halfway across the dorm room Harry’s back to snoring softly.  Louis pads over to the bathroom and takes a piss, wondering if Harry  _actually_  expected Louis not to get him  _anything_  for Valentine’s Day, then thinks fondly of the sets of magical temporary tattoos Zayn had helped him make for Harry. They last for two weeks and move when you look at them, which Louis knows Harry will think is cool, and he made some animal ones too, like a butterfly and a couple of swallows.

It probably isn’t as extravagant as anything Harry got for him, Louis muses as he washes his hands at the sink, but Louis already  _did_  the extravagant thing two weeks ago.

After Louis splashes some water on his face and dries himself off with a big, fluffy towel, he hears another set of footsteps at the entrance to the bathroom.

“Haz?” he asks sleepily, turning around and trying to see who it is in the dark. He didn’t bring his glasses into the bathroom so he can’t really see fine details.

Instead of responding, the dark figure raise what looks to be a wand, and just as Louis starts to cry out in confused panic, the boy yells,  _“Stupefy!”_

The last thing Louis sees is a jet of red light, and then his whole world goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me ;)
> 
> Come vent/say hi on [tumblr](http://povverbottoms.tumblr.com) or in the comments!


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zayn, Harry, and Liam form a plan, Louis has a few close calls, and a battle takes place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I had all sorts of trouble with wifi and family stuff but here it is!
> 
> I proudly present the final chapter (besides the epilogue) of You Are The Blood.
> 
> WARNINGS for non-graphic torture (use of the Cruciatus Curse) and blood.

“Master Malik.”

“Master Malik.”

_“Master Malik!”_

“Mmph?” Zayn gasps, his lips stuck together as he startles out of sleep.

“Master Malik, are you awake?”

Zayn shakes his head back and forth, trying to figure out if he’s dreaming or not.

“Master Malik, I’m sorry to wake you, but this is very important.”

With a start, Zayn realizes that it's the Auror from his common room portrait trying to get his attention, and that he isn't dreaming at all. The Auror has made a strict practice of not flitting in between the portrait out front and the corresponding one in Zayn's bedroom ever since he got an eyeful of Louis's bare bum early in the year, so Zayn knows that this must be really important.

Zayn props himself up, peering over Liam's sleeping form to gaze drowsily at the portrait of the Auror hanging above his dresser. "What's wrong?"

The Auror frowns. "Mr. Styles has been banging on your common room door for the better part of ten minutes trying to get inside. He's near hysterical, but he didn't have the password, so I needed to make sure you were alright with him coming in at this hour."

 _Harry's_ outside, hysterical? Zayn gets an odd feeling in his stomach. "Um - sure, let him in."

Zayn gets up quickly, trying not to wake Liam up as he does so, and tiptoes down into his common room after pulling on a pair of trackies to cover himself up and grabbing his wand.

As soon as Zayn gets to the foot of the stairs, Harry bursts into the common room wearing only a pair of boxer briefs, waving a piece of parchment around, and clutching two wands and a pair of glasses in his hand. (Zayn's still not convinced that this isn't a dream.)

"Zayn!" Harry shouts, his voice raspy and edged with something that sounds like fear. "Zayn, he's gone, he's  _gone!"_

"Who's gone?" Zayn asks sharply.

"Louis," says Harry, barreling toward Zayn and then stopping short when he's reached him. Harry's breathing hard, his eyes wild and frightened. "Louis, they - they  _took_ him and I don't know where he is and I'm so _so_ scared and he's  _gone-"_

"W-what?" asks Zayn. His ears start to ring, but before he can even process what Harry just said the other boy bursts into tears, dropping everything on the ground and fisting his hands in his own hair. "H-Harry, Harry, you've got to calm down-"

"I can't," Harry wails, pulling at his hair until his knuckles go white. "I don't know what to do, you have to  _help_ me, please-"

Zayn’s voice breaks when he puts his hands on Harry’s shoulders and pleads, “I know he’s not - t-talk to me, Harry, tell me what h-happened, okay?”

There’s thumping on the stairs but Zayn doesn’t turn to see who it is, just tries to stop Harry from shaking so violently as he fights back confused tears of his own.

“What’s wrong?” he hears Liam ask.

Harry, who’d calmed somewhat since Zayn had started to hold him, starts crying hysterically again, and he trembles a bit before his legs give out and he’s sinking onto the floor with a quiet scream.

“No no  _no_  no-” Zayn cries, following Harry down and putting his hands back on Harry’s shoulders. Zayn’s started to cry too, shivering as he tries to hold back his tears and keep a clear head.

“Hey,” says Liam, louder this time as he kneels down next to the two of them.  “Babe, c’mon, what’s - what’s going on?”

“They took Louis,” Harry cries, wiping at his eyes even as fresh tears continue to wet his cheeks.

Zayn’s biting his own lip so hard it’s going numb in an effort to stop himself from crying. He isn’t sure he’d be able to speak without losing it, because the  _fear_  that’s clawing at his insides is too much to keep inside.

“Who took Louis?” asks Liam sharply.

“The p-people who want to k-kill him, I think,” blubbers Harry. “And I don’t - I d-don’t know where he is or how to get to him a-and - I don’t know what to  _do-”_

Despite Zayn’s best efforts, a small sob escapes him.

“Shh, shh,” Liam tries to soothe both of them, his hand warm on Zayn’s back.  “How do we - Harry, can you, um, can you tell us what happened?”

Zayn’s eyes dart to the objects Harry dropped - the two wands and the piece of parchment.  One of them is- “Is that Louis’s w-wand?”

Harry nods, sniffling and taking in great gulps of air. “He doesn’t - he doesn’t h-have it with him, I don’t - he doesn’t have  _anything-”_

“Okay, but Harry -  _Harry -_ how do you know, can you tell us what happened?” asks Liam, sounding increasingly panicked.

“I - I, um-” Harry tries to pull himself together enough to speak. Zayn bites down on his lip once again as he starts to rub soothing circles into Harry’s shoulders. “I w-woke up, like, half an hour ago or something, I dunno, because I was c-cold, and - Lou wasn’t there, so I thought he m-might be in the bathroom or something, so I went to check in th-there, and he wasn’t in there either, so - I went back into the room, and he - his wand was still there, and so were his g-glasses, and he wouldn’t’ve - Zayn, you  _know_  he wouldn’t’ve left without his wand-”

“I know,” says Zayn, feeling hollow.

“What about wearing contacts?” asks Liam. He’s grasping at straws and they all know it.

“I checked those too,” sniffs Harry, wiping at his eyes. “He’s not - anyway, so then I th-thought I could get out the map and see where he was, just to m-make sure he was alright-”

Harry gestures to the blank, folded piece of parchment, which Zayn realizes now must be the Marauders’ Map.

“And I c-couldn’t see - he wasn’t anywhere near the common room or  _anywhere,_ I couldn’t see him at all on the map, and th-that’s when I started to p-panic but - I flipped open all the, all the little insets just to b-be sure he w-wasn’t anywhere, and I  _saw_ him.”

"You saw Louis?" Zayn asks, feeling even more confused.

"Yeah, he was - here-"

Harry picks up his wand and the parchment, tapping it and clearing his throat before choking out, "I solemnly swear I am up to n-no good."

The dark ink markings begin to appear on the pages, but before they're even fully formed Harry's flipping it open and unfolding it fully before pointing to an inset near the edge of the page.

"Is that - what's that dotted line?" asks Liam.

"I dunno," says Harry, pointing to it more firmly. "But I swear - he was just c-crossing that line when I looked, but there was another - another dot, like, r-right next to his. Practically on t-top of his."

He starts crying quietly again and Zayn, who had taken his hands off of Harry's shoulders to wring them together, grips Harry tightly again to try to help him calm down. He knows what that dotted line means - it denotes the boundary of the magical spell that prevents movement in and out of Hogwarts by any means other than Floo or physical travel.

"Who - who was it?" Liam asks quietly, like he's afraid to know the answer.

Harry takes his hands away from his face, then, looking at the map like he might make it burst into flames with his very gaze. "Tom Parker," he spits out, his eyes wet.

Zayn and Liam both gasp.

"And then they both just - v-vanished," Harry blubbers, wiping at his eyes again. "And I d-don't know where Tom t-took him, and I - and I - I don’t know what to  _do-”_

He starts to take these great big gasping breaths, the kind where Zayn can’t be sure if he’s hyperventilating or choking or still crying, and before Zayn can attempt to calm him down there are new footsteps coming from the opposite staircase.

“Harry, Harry-” Liam is saying- “try to breathe, mate, alright? You have to-”

“What’s going on?” Perrie asks, sounding concerned.

Zayn turns to see her clad in a pastel yellow nightgown with matching slippers. Somewhat unsurprisingly (but still jarring nonetheless), Niall is with her as well, wearing only a pair of pants.

“Harry,” Niall starts, “mate, are you-”

 _“I was going to give him a promise ring!”_  Harry screams into his hands, curling in on himself even further as he starts to cry again. 

“W-what?” asks Zayn.

“I-” Harry stops, shaking his head as he wipes at his eyes and tries to keep his face hidden.  “I w-was - I had a ring to g-give him, for Valentine’s Day.”

“Wait, what - is Louis okay?” asks Niall.

“You’re going to  _propose?”_ Zayn asks shrilly , ignoring Niall. 

Harry shakes his head. “No, it’s like - it’s this Muggle th-thing Gemma told me about, it’s - it’s not like an engagement ring, it’s l-like a - um-”

“A pre-engagement ring,” Liam supplies.

Zayn’s jaw drops in shock and Harry sniffles and starts to cry again. “B-but I - I can’t even k-keep him safe and I don’t know if he’s - I don’t-”

“Harry, shh,” Zayn shushes him gently, not wanting to hear any more heartbreaking news lest he himself start crying again as well.  Liam’s started to fill Perrie and Niall in on what’s happening. “He’s going to be alright, everything’s g-going to be alright.”

Zayn raises his wand and wordlessly Summons a glass sitting on the coffee table, then mutters  _“Aguamenti”_  to fill it with clean water. “Here, drink this, H.  Louis is going to be fine, you know that.”

As Harry drinks, his hand shaking as it clutches the glass, Zayn wonders who he’s trying to reassure more - Harry or himself.

“We should tell McGonagall,” Niall declares as Harry finishes the water.

“How would we find her, though?” asks Liam.  “S’not like she sleeps in her office.”

“Some of the professors do rounds of the hallways at night,” Perrie suggests.  “We could find one of them and see what they can do to help.”

Harry finishes the water and thrusts the glass back into Zayn’s hands, his lip still trembling. “There’s no  _time_ for that, though, we need to get to Louis  _now.”_

“Harry, we need to find adults who are actually trained to deal with this,” Liam insists.

“We  _are_  trained to deal with this!” Harry shouts, starting to get agitated as he hauls himself up from the ground. “We’re all of age, we’re almost done learning everything they have to teach us - we don’t have time to wait around for someone else to help us and twiddle our thumbs while Louis is - L-Louis is-”

He breaks off, biting his lip and looking at the floor. 

“Look, in any case,” Zayn continues hastily, hoping his voice doesn’t break and not wanting to consider the possibility that Louis may already be beyond help, “we’re not going to accomplish anything standing around and talking in our nightclothes, are we? Let’s all get dressed. You can borrow some of Liam’s clothes, Harry.”

He pastes a shaky smile on his face and holds his hand out for Harry to take.  Harry does so, frowning but seeming to acknowledge the fact that they need to put clothes on. Niall and Perrie head up Perrie’s staircase while Zayn drags Harry up his own staircase, Liam following behind them.

As soon as they get up to Zayn’s room, though, Harry breaks, collapsing against Zayn and burying his head in Zayn’s shoulder.

“You’re alright, it’s going to be alright,” Zayn says automatically, motioning to Liam to grab some clothes from the closet.

“Zayn,” Harry says quietly, his mouth twisting against Zayn’s skin like he’s trying not to cry again. “Zayn, what if we’re - what if we don’t - what if we’re too late?”

“Don’t think like that,” Zayn whispers, hugging him tightly. 

“Yeah, but-” Harry gulps- “the last time th-they tried to - well, they used poison, so - I d-don’t know if they’d keep him - it’s been half an hour-”

He starts to cry into Zayn’s shoulder, so hard that he can’t even get the rest of the words out. Zayn doesn’t know what to tell him because  _he’d_ been thinking the exact same thing - that if the PC wanted to kill Louis it wouldn’t take them more than a second to do it - so he gives a little whimper and starts to cry too, despite his best efforts to hold it in.

“Hey, wait a second, wait a second,” Liam says, walking over to them with t-shirts for each of them and gently separating them.  “Those Peace Crusaders weren’t the only people who wanted to find Louis, were they?”

A few weeks ago, Louis had informed a small number of his friends (besides Zayn and Harry, of course) about his heritage and delicate situation, including Liam, Niall, and Perrie.

“N-no,” Harry sniffles, pulling the shirt over his head. 

“The Neo-Death Eaters wanted to find him too,” Liam continues, handing Zayn a shirt as well.  “And I don’t even think they wanted to kill him - I think they just want a bit of his blood for a potion.”

Zayn pulls it on, choosing not to comment on the fact that a potion requiring “blood of the progeny” - like all of the reincarnation potions that he’d looked up for Draco and Hermione - is probably  _not_  talking about only a pricked finger.

“You think that’s who Tom took them to? The Death Eaters?" Harry asks.

Liam nods. “Definitely. Tom’s grandfather was a Death Eater, wasn’t he? He never shut up about it when we Gryffindors had Defense Against the Dark Arts with the Slytherins. I’ll bet anything he’s trying to carry on the family business.”

“He always swore he was different, though,” muses Harry.  “I mean, I know he’s a prick and a kiss-arse, but I never thought he would want to  _kill_ anyone.”

“Me neither, but based on the way he treated Louis when he thought Lou was Muggleborn, I don’t think he was all that different than a Death Eater,” says Zayn. “And ‘cause someone had to teach him all that Pureblood-superiority drivel, I’d guess that his dad isn’t too supportive of Muggleborns either.  _He_  could be a neo-Death Eater too.”

“Family business,” Liam repeats.

Harry pulls on the pair of trackies Liam hands him, wiping at his eyes with the heels of his hands once he’s finished. “But, like, that doesn’t - it’s not like Tom took Louis to his bloody  _house,_ y’know? I need to find out where he  _is.”_

“Well, assuming Tom took Louis  _for_  the neo-Death Eaters, then it’s because they’re trying to resurrect Voldemort,” Zayn says.

“What would they need Louis for?” asks Harry.

“They’d need his blood - a living relative’s blood - as part of a reincarnation potion,” says Zayn. “Hermione had me look them up last term. And that’s - that’s why the other guys have been trying to kill Louis, and anyone else they think might be related to You-Know-Who - because they don’t want the neo-Death Eaters to get to them first.”

Harry sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose in despair.

“Well, what else was in the potion?” Liam asks as the three of them finish getting dressed.  “Maybe that could give us a clue. You told me all about them at one point, but I've forgotten.”

“They were all different. But - I mean, we don’t know which one they’re using, but all the potions had blood of the progeny, bone of the mother, and remains of the deceased listed as ingredients.”

“Remains of the deceased?” Liam pulls a face. “Don’t imagine there’s much left of ‘im by now, probably just some moldy old bones.”

Harry shudders. “What about that other one? Bone of the mother?”

“I mean, that’s pretty self-explanatory, but - you know what, that’d be a good place to start,” muses Zayn. “They might be doing the ceremony wherever his mother’s buried.”

“Where’s his mother buried?” Harry asks, perking up and gripping his wand tighter. 

“Dunno. Might be in our History textbook, let me check.”

Zayn crosses over to his bookcase and grabs his History of Magic textbook from the bottom shelf, Harry and Liam following behind him like ducklings. He knows it’s a long shot, but there might be a sentence or two in there about You-Know-Who’s parents before the book launches into an account of Voldemort’s rise to power and subsequent demise at the hands of Harry Potter.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Harry mutters as Zayn flips through the pages.

“He’s going as fast as he can,” says Liam sharply.

“Well it’s not fast  _enough,”_  Harry grits out. “Louis could be - he could be-”

“Harry, it’s not helping anyone to think that way,” snaps Zayn, his fingers slipping nervously on the thick pages as he tries not to think about the worst case scenario.

He can hear Harry shifting restlessly behind him, and it’s distracting Zayn to the point where he can barely read the words on the pages he’s skimming. 

“There,” Liam says after another minute, jabbing his finger into a page that Zayn was just about to turn.  He’s pointing right above the section labeled “Early Life.”

The three of them lean in, jostling with each other to read the words.

_Merope Gaunt died within an hour of giving birth to her son, and her last request was that she be buried back in Little Hangleton next to the grave plot set aside for her estranged husband, Tom Riddle, Sr.  Due to space constraints, the orphanage was unable to honor this request and is believed to have had her buried in a neighboring field._

“Little Hangleton,” Zayn repeats out loud shrugging.  “Well, that’s a start, I guess. We can tell the professors what we know and-”

Suddenly, the door to his room slams shut, cutting him off.

“What was that?” Zayn asks, whipping his head around.

“Harry just bolted,” says Liam, sounding confused. “Maybe he forgot something.”

There’s a short pause, and then both of them gasp as they seem to simultaneously realize what Harry’s about to do.

 _“No!”_  Zayn roars, tearing across the bedroom and flinging the door open as he races down the stairs to his common room, Liam hot on his heels. “Harry, don’t  _do_  this, I swear to Merlin-”

They race into the common room just in time to see a flash of green light from the fireplace as Harry disappears.

 _“Fuck,”_ groans Zayn, kicking over a floor lamp in his frustration before putting his head in his hands and collapsing into an armchair. “Stupid, _stupid,_ stupid-”

Niall and Perrie come racing down their staircase a second later.

“What’s that? What’s happened?” Niall asks breathlessly.

“Harry left,” Liam tells them.

Zayn doesn’t know what to  _do,_ now he doesn’t know where Harry  _or_  Louis is and they could both be in  _danger_ , probably already are, and the rest of them very desperately need to find an adult. A  _real_  adult.

“What d’you mean he left?” asks Perrie.

“We - we figured out where Louis might be, but - but we don’t  _know_  anything, we don’t know how dangerous it is, and we aren’t  _prepared-”_

“But Harry just went ahead and Flooed there,” Liam finishes, cutting Zayn off as Zayn becomes increasingly more agitated. Zayn’s grateful that Liam stopped him there, because he might have started crying again if he’d gone on much longer. “We have to find a professor as soon as we can, it’s the only way we’re going to be able to help them.”

“Let’s go, then,” says Niall, sounding determined.  “Up you go, Zaynie, c’mon. They’re gonna be alright.”

Zayn doesn’t move, too despondent. But then he feels hands pull his own away from his face, looks up to see Niall and Liam’s concerned faces.

“Zayn,” Liam says softly, stroking over Zayn’s wrist. “We’re going to be able to help them as long as we can find a teacher, right? The sooner we do it the better. C’mon, love.”

Zayn lets the others pull him up, trying to shake off the feeling of hopelessness that’s already seized him as they leave the common room, breaking into a run.  Wherever Louis and Harry are, he hopes they aren’t hurt.

Or worse.

xxx

Louis wakes up slowly, blinking his eyes open blearily and frowning when they don’t adjust right away. The first thing he notices is that his surroundings are pitch black; the second thing he notices is that he’s slung over someone’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and he immediately starts to squirm around in alarm.

“Watch it! Hey, no - stay still-” the person carrying him exclaims, grappling at him until Louis manages to throw them both off balance, sending himself toppling to the ground.  Louis can’t see where he’s going, but he feels damp earth underneath his palms as he scrabbles around for balance and reaches for his wand.

Louis has only just registered that he doesn’t have his wand on him - and that the robe he’s wearing is both borrowed and the  _only_ thing he’s wearing besides his briefs - when he hears the other boy yell,  _“Petrificus Totalus!”_

Instantly, Louis’s whole body goes rigid, his muscles freezing up as he collapses onto the ground like a plank.

“Sorry about that,” says the boy cheerfully. It sounds like Tom Parker’s voice, but - it  _can’t_  be Tom, can it? There’s no way-  _“Wingardium Leviosa!”_

Louis feels himself float into the air, still stock-straight like a board.

“My dad said you might try to get away,” says Tom.  “Dunno why, though - we just need you for, like, a couple minutes, I reckon.  C’mon, I don’t want us to miss the Portkey!”

He hurries along, keeping Louis levitated in front of him with his wand.  Even if he wasn’t already frozen up by magic, Louis would be petrified with terror anyway - Tom’s cheerful demeanor is just freaking him out even  _more,_ and he has no  _idea_  what Tom’s dad has to do with any of this. He thought Tom’s father was a retired Ministry official. But that doesn’t really matter - the only thing that matters is that Tom is taking Louis off of Hogwarts grounds, and no one else inside the castle has any idea of where they’re going - or that Louis is even  _gone_.

He tries to cry for help, but his vocal chords are Petrified as well.

“Here it is,” says Tom after another minute.  He breaks the Levitation Charm, helping Louis settle on the ground, and out of the corner of his eye Louis can see that the Portkey looks like an old pocket watch with a blurry family crest on it. His vision isn't terrible without his glasses, but some of the small details occasionally get lost.

“It’s a pity you can’t travel in and out of Hogwarts by magic,” says Tom conversationally as he places a finger on the pocket watch, causing it to glow a pale blue. “Otherwise none of this would’ve been necessary, could've just nabbed you in the loo and taken off.”

Louis doesn’t respond, obviously, can only watch the Portkey continue to glow brighter and brighter.

“Oh!” says Tom, right as the Portkey starts to shake ominously. “Almost forgot.”

He grabs hold of Louis’s wrist with his free hand as he grips the pocket watch tightly with the other, and the next second the two of them are sent hurtling into nothingness, squeezed through space as the Portkey teleports to its predetermined destination.

Five seconds later, Louis and Tom tumble out of the void onto soft dirt and grass covered in a light layer of snow. Louis can’t brace his fall because he’s been Petrified, so he ends up landing face-first on the cold, hard ground, also unable to push himself up out of the dirt.

If he wasn't  _already_ scared out of his mind, Louis’s heart absolutely leaps into his throat when he hears jeering laughter coming at him from all sides.

 _“This_  is the Dark Lord’s progeny?” a gruff voice asks. “Kinda pathetic, Parker.”

“My son has Petrified him, I believe,” comes another voice, reedier and thinner. “Undo the spell, if you would, Thomas. I need to make sure it’s him.”

 _“Finite Incantatem,”_  Tom says.

No sooner is the spell on Louis lifted then hands are seizing him and dragging him roughly to his feet. He blinks and looks around, shivering in the cold as he takes in the large circle of figures in black robes staring back at him.

“Yep, that’s him. Looks just like he does in his file,” says the reedy-voiced man standing next to Tom. Now that Louis can get a good look at him, he’s clearly Tom Parker’s father, with the same cheekbones and everything.  With a start, Louis remembers Tom saying cheerfully that his father used to be Head of History at the Ministry of Magic - meaning that he’d had unlimited access to the Archives for  _decades,_ even the most highly-classified files. Even Louis’s file. Oh, fuck.

“Why’s he practically starkers?” asks another man, shaking Louis out of his thoughts. There looks to be about thirty of them. Some of them are wearing odd silvery masks, but most of them have their faces uncovered.

“Not my fault he doesn’t wear pyjamas to bed,” says Tom, shifting from one foot to the other. “I had to put him in one of my robes. Now can we hurry this along? I want to go back to sleep.”

Some of the men chuckle. “Cold-hearted little brat you’ve raised, Parker,” one of them says.

“Proud of it, too,” says Tom’s dad, reaching over to ruffle his son’s hair. Tom makes a face.

“Tom,” Louis says quietly, the first word he’s spoken since he tucked himself into bed next to Harry six hours ago.  His voice cracks a bit from disuse and horror. “Tom, how  _could_ you?”

He’d known Tom was a two-faced piece of shit, but he hadn’t actually expected Tom to sell out Louis’s  _life._

“What?” asks Tom, seemingly unwilling to meet Louis’s eyes. “It’s not a big deal, Louis. He’s  _your_  grandfather, I would think you’d  _want_  to resurrect him.”

“Not particularly,” says Louis, shifting in the men’s hold and trying to close his borrowed robe all the way around himself to provide some small amount of modesty and warmth.  His mind is whirring, trying to figure out what’s going on - these clearly can’t be Peace Crusaders, because Louis would already be dead if that were the case, so they must be neo-Death Eaters. He doesn’t know how  _all_ of these people somehow managed to figure out that he’s related to Voldemort, though, and why not a single one of them has blabbed anything to the  _Daily Prophet_  or the general public.

“C’mon, let’s get this set up,” says another Death Eater. “Now that we know he’s here and all.”

As ten or so men drag a large black cauldron to the center of the circle, Louis tries to figure out if he’s about to be killed or not.  Either way, he’s so terrified he can hardly see straight, and he definitely would have weed himself in fright by now if he hadn’t gone to the toilet just before Tom had Stunned him.  Louis thinks about Harry, still safe and sound asleep in their bed, and that’s the only thing that makes him feel marginally better - that Harry is still safe.

“Got it,” one of the Death Eaters says, and Louis sees they’ve lit a fire under the huge cauldron. The grass is covered in snow, and even though Louis is barefoot and could definitely use the heat right now, the magical fire doesn’t spread, staying concentrated under the cauldron.  It reminds Louis of a candle, like the ones in the fancy restaurants that he and Harry have gone to on dates, and -  _wait._

“Wait a second,” Louis spits out, struggling against the tight hold the Death Eaters have on him as he turns back to Tom.   _“You_  told everyone that I was at Madam Puddifoot’s, didn’t you? That’s how - that’s how they knew how to find me, because - because I told you about my date.”

Tom opens his mouth, actually looking remorseful, but his father cuts him off.  “And it would’ve worked, too, if that PC  _scum_  hadn’t gotten to you before we did.”

Louis swallows heavily, feeling so betrayed and angry that his head’s starting to hurt.

“I’m sorry, Louis,” Tom says quickly, wincing at the sharp glare his father sends him.

“You almost got Harry  _killed,”_  Louis says accusingly, barrelling on in his anger.

“I didn’t mean-”

 _“Silence!”_  roars Mr. Parker.  “Yes,  _boy,_ my son’s been feeding us information about you. What, did you think he was being nice to you because he _liked_  you?”

Well - not exactly, but  _ouch._

“Louis-” Tom starts.

“Start digging,” one of the other men yells gruffly.

Another Death Eater flicks his wand at a large shovel laying on the ground, which animates and starts rapidly digging into the soft earth. Are they - are they digging Louis’s  _grave?_ Louis’s blood runs cold. 

Instead of saying anything else, Louis starts to look around, trying to figure out any means he can use to escape. He doesn't have a wand, and he can't see behind him, but the part of the snowy field that Louis can see looks pretty barren and devoid of any useful escape tools.

Unfortunately, Louis is barely able to do wordless magic, let alone  _wandless_ magic, so he can't exactly see himself Apparating away from here any time soon. If he tried to run he'd get Stunned - or worse - in an instant, plus he doubts he'd be able to get away from the two burly wizards holding him tightly.

"You shouldn't have to go more than a meter or two," one of the Death Eaters says, breaking Louis out of his thoughts. "Think it was a pretty hasty job."

What?

"We're already there, I think," says another one, peering into the hole that the shovel has dug.

"Let me see," says Tom's father, striding over and joining the group of wizards looking down into the earth. "Yes, that's it."

Louis glances over at Tom, trying to look for any clues in his face as to what's going on, but the other boy is steadfastly staring at his own feet.

A gross, slightly wet ripping sound brings Louis's attention back to Tom's father, who's standing up and holding something with a satisfied smile on his face.

“That ought to do nicely.”

There are approving grunts and murmurs from all around the circle, and Louis squints and tries to figure out what the object is.

With a start, he realizes that it’s a bone – a  _human_ bone.

“Is the cauldron ready?” Parker asks.

“Yessir,” one of the other Death Eaters says.  The water inside the large cauldron is starting to boil, bubbling up and sending steam into the cold air.

“Excellent,” says Tom’s father. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a long fifteen years.  I want to thank you for sticking together every step of the way, because tonight is the night we’ve been working toward all those years.”

More murmurs rise up from the black-cloaked figures, and the circle seems to tighten a bit in anticipation. Even the men holding Louis step forward excitedly.

Tom Parker’s father steps toward the cauldron, holding the bone aloft until his hand is encased in steam.  The entire circle holds its breath.

“Bone of the mother,” he says clearly, releasing his hold on the bone and letting it fall into the cauldron with a splash.

The water sizzles, which Louis knows signifies the beginning of potion-brewing, and the steam rising from the potion turns a faint red color.  No sooner has Tom’s father added the first ingredient than another wizard steps forward holding a long parcel bundled up in black cloth.  When Mr. Parker sees him, he nods at the other wizard and steps back, allowing him access to the cauldron as well.

The Death Eater begins to unwrap the bundle, pulling off layers of black cloth.  The circle tightens even more,  _waiting_  for something, and the uneasy feeling in Louis’s stomach grows and grows.

Finally, the Death Eater pulls back the last layer of fabric and says, “Remains of the deceased.”

Louis can’t help the scream that bubbles out of his throat when he sees what’s inside – a partially-decayed corpse, a skeleton with some of the tissue still hanging off of the bones.  The Death Eaters standing around him all kneel in reverence but Louis screams again, trying to twist away from the men holding him.

He steps on one’s foot and elbows the other in the stomach, screaming again as he tries to get away. Their grip loosens and Louis manages to twist away from their hands, but he doesn’t even make it five feet before someone else is yelling,  _“Incarcerous!”_  and ropes wrap tightly around his body, binding him up and making him fall back into the snow.

“No –  _no –_ let me go,  _please–”_ he screams, kicking out weakly as the Death Eaters haul him back to his feet and drag him back into the circle.  Seeing Voldemort’s corpse had been a wake-up call for Louis, had hit him like a ton of bricks that this is  _really happening,_ and he doesn’t know how he’s going to stop it – he doesn’t know how he’s going to get away –

“Shut him up!” Tom’s father yells, and the next second someone is shoving a dirty rag into Louis’s mouth, pressing down on his tongue and muffling his yells.  It’s gross and demeaning and Louis  _loses_ it, starts crying just a few seconds later because he can’t call for help and no one knows where he is and he’s – he’s going to die alone and no one else is going to even  _know_  that he’s dead, they’ll probably be searching for him for years later, and Harry –  _Harry,_ fuck, Harry’s not going to know what happened to him, and Louis cries even harder at that thought, screaming into the rag even though the noise doesn’t travel very far.

Though tears are starting to blur his vision, Louis can still see when they add the flesh-covered bones to the potion, watches it hiss and pop and turn a brilliant green, and it only makes him struggle harder because once Voldemort’s remains are completely added and mixed in, the entire circle of Death Eaters turns and  _looks_  at Louis.

The men holding him lift him up slightly, enough that his kicking feet don’t touch the ground, and begin to walk forward.

“Blood of the progeny,” one of the Death Eaters murmurs, staring at Louis.

“Blood of the progeny,” another echoes in reverence.

Louis screams into the rag, trying to spit it out but failing because his jaw is propped open too much.  Tears are streaming down his cheeks, stinging as they run over the cracked skin of his lips, and he can only think about Harry as he’s carried over to the cauldron – his life feels like it’s flashing before his eyes, but not his  _past_  life, his – what Louis had always imagined his  _future_  life might be like, the one that had Harry in it forever, the one where they grew old together and had kids and grandkids, and bought a Pensieve when their memories started to go, kept and preserved special memories to relive whenever they wanted –

The whole circle is chanting “Blood of the progeny” now, but Louis can barely hear them over his own thoughts and the way his heart is beating in his head, blood rushing through his ears, the tears freezing on his face in the cold night.

When they reach the cauldron, the two Death Eaters holding Louis bend him forward so that his face is close to the bubbling surface, so close that he can smell the putrid stench of the potion and feel the steam melting the tears on his cheeks.  The chanting stops all of a sudden, like someone cut the rest of the group off, and Louis hears a new voice murmur, “Blood of the progeny,” very close to his ear.

Tom Parker’s father.

The next instant, Louis feels the tip of a knife pressed against the side of his throat.  He cries the loudest he ever has, trying to shift away from it, but the other men hold him fast.  This is – this is it, this is the  _end._ Louis wonders if Tom will ever have the decency to tell Harry what happened to Louis, or if he and Louis’s family will have to live the rest of their lives not knowing what happened to him.  Louis thinks of his mother, and the tears fall thicker when he realizes that Voldemort’s going to be  _back,_ wonders if his Muggle family is going to be alright-

“Wait!” he hears Tom shout.

The pressure of the knife disappears, and Louis is hauled back from the cauldron enough that his face isn’t in danger of being burned by the hot steam.

“What is it?” Mr. Parker asks impatiently.

“You’re – but – I thought you just needed his blood,” says Tom.  Louis can’t see him, but his voice is coming from somewhere to Louis’s left.

“We do,” says Mr. Parker.

“But – you don’t need to kill him, then. You don’t need all of his blood, do you?” asks Tom.

Muffled laughter echoes around the circle of Death Eaters.

“What, you thought we were just going to prick his finger?” Tom’s father asks mockingly.

“I –  _surely_ you don’t have to kill him? Maybe you can just cut his hand or something,” Tom suggests stupidly.

Tom’s father laughs again. “Sometimes I forget just how young you are, Thomas.”

Louis whimpers.

“My son, when Lord Voldemort returns, do you  _honestly_  think he’s going to be pleased if we let his progeny survive?  Someone descended from the Dark Lord’s bloodline who could pose a potential threat in the future when he grows into his powers?”

“He –  _Louis?_ No, he’s not – he wouldn’t be a threat, Father, I promise! You could just – seriously, you can just cut his hand or maybe his cheek–”

As Tom’s father cuts him off and begins to rebuke his son once more, Louis struggles with the realization that Tom truly thought he was bringing Louis for a quick and easy blood donation, with the assumption that both of them could be back in their beds in Hogwarts within an hour or so.  It _almost_  makes him not want to throttle Tom until he dies a painful death, but not quite.

All too soon, Tom is being dismissed completely, complete with instructions from Mr. Parker for two other Death Eaters to hold the boy in place in case he tries to help Louis.  Then, Louis feels the tip of the knife against his neck again, and he trembles in fear, crying into the gag and closing his eyes as he’s bent over the cauldron once more.

“Blood of the progeny,” Tom’s father repeats, gripping the back of Louis’s neck with his large hand and starting to press the knife forward as he prepares to slit Louis’s throat. Louis grits his teeth and braces himself for the inevitable pain that’s going to come –

_“Expelliarmus!”_

The circle of Death Eaters gasps, and the point of the knife leaves Louis’s neck as it flies out of Mr. Parker’s hand.  Louis almost knocks his chin on the edge of the cauldron as the men holding him back up quickly, taking him with them, and Louis looks up through blurry vision to see a figure running toward them through the darkness.

The Death Eaters begin to shoot spells at the newcomer but he blocks them easily, and a tiny wave of hope flutters in Louis’s chest that this person might actually be here to help him.  The volley of spells coming at him is too thick for the other man to do anything but cast Shield Charms, though, and Louis hopes he doesn’t get hurt.  In the meantime, Louis busies himself with trying to get the rag out of his mouth so he can communicate with the newcomer if need be, and after a few seconds of intense concentration he manages to work his jaw in such a way that he dislodges the rag from in between his teeth and spits it out onto the frozen ground.

When he looks back up, the figure is much closer than before, and Louis can almost make out his face using the light from the Death Eaters’ spells.  Finally, the other man yells, “Louis! Lou, you there?”

Louis gasps.  It’s – it’s  _Harry._ “Harry!”

He’s about to yell  _you shouldn’t be here,_ because even though Louis is impossibly grateful and so overwhelmed he might start crying again, above  _all else_  he’s terrified for Harry’s safety; it seems that Harry shifting his attention to Louis for a split second has cost him, though, because he doesn’t manage to block the next Disarming Spell that comes his way, and his wand flies out of his hand, as does another one from his pocket.

 _“Levicorpus!”_  a Death Eater yells, and the next second Harry is hoisted up into the air by his ankle, hanging upside down and held there by an invisible force.

Louis screams, properly now that he’s not gagged anymore, as the rush of comfort and relief he had just started to get from Harry being here rapidly turns into dread and fear.

“Please don’t hurt him!” he shouts, struggling to get out of the ropes binding him as he watches Harry flail around in the air.  The Death Eater who hexed Harry waves his wand, moving Harry through the air until he’s hanging in the center of the circle of hooded figures.  “Leave him alone, _please–”_

“Shut him up, for Merlin’s sake,” snaps Tom’s father, and the next second a meaty hand closes over Louis’s mouth, effectively silencing him.  _“Now,_ who do we have here?”

Louis trembles as Harry continues trying to free himself. He doesn’t answer Tom’s father.

Mr. Parker strides closer, close enough that he’s probably breathing the same air as Harry. “I asked you your name,  _boy.”_

Harry spits in his face. The circle of Death Eaters gasps.

Louis screams into the hand over his mouth when Tom’s father responds by slapping Harry hard across the face.

Mr. Parker turns to his son.  “Is this a classmate of yours, Thomas?”

Tom nods, looking smaller than Louis’s ever seen him.  “Y-yeah.  H-Harry Styles, he’s in Slytherin.”

He adds the last part like he hopes it will mollify his father, but Louis sees Mr. Parker’s eyes narrow as soon as Tom speaks Harry’s name.  Harry seems to have lost the strength in his abs required to struggle and try to free his foot from the spell; now he’s just hanging there limply, and Louis is crying into the Death Eater’s hand.

“You’re Anne Cox’s son,” Mr. Parker informs Harry, circling the suspended boy slowly.  He taps his wand against his hand several times, like he’s trying to size Harry up.  “Your mother’s a blood traitor, boy.”

“Leave my mum out of this,” Harry snaps angrily.  “You have to-”

“Father–” Tom starts hastily.

“Thomas, have I taught you  _nothing_  about associating with blood traitors?” Mr. Parker asks, backing up a bit.  “They’re no better than Mudbloods, and they deserve the same treatment they’re  _all_ going to get once the Dark Lord returns.”

“Father, please don’t–”

“It’s time you get used to seeing this, my son,” says Tom’s father.  He raises his wand.

Louis panics and bites the hand over his mouth, causing one of the Death Eaters behind him to jump and curse, jerking his hand away.  Louis takes advantage of the short reprieve to yell, “Leave him–”

_“Crucio!”_

 The Death Eater’s hand claps back over Louis’s mouth, muffling his screams of horror as Harry’s body contorts in mid-air, pain written all over his face as the Torture Curse wracks through him.  Louis can tell he’s trying not to make any noise, and it only makes Louis struggle harder once Harry _does_  start to scream, an involuntary reaction to the  _hurt_  flowing through his veins and piercing all over his body.

“Stop it!” Louis yells, shaking his head back and forth to dislodge the hand covering his mouth.  He’s tied up but he’s writhing around as much as he can, desperately trying to get free so he can save Harry. “Stop it,  _please,_ stop!”

Tom’s father doesn’t let up, though, and now Louis isn’t sure who’s screaming louder, him or Harry.  He feels helpless and so sick that he might throw up, every ounce of strength in his body concentrated on overpowering the two men holding him, but - but all the strength of his body isn’t  _enough,_ he can’t  _move,_ he can’t help, he can only watch as the love of his life gets tortured and screams in pain.

The feelings of fear and anger and hopelessness start to build up in Louis’s chest, weighing him down almost like they’re tangible objects.  Harry’s started to cry, curling in on himself mid-air like it might provide some protection from the curse ripping apart his nerves from the inside out, and the overwhelming sense of dread and agony welling up in Louis’s chest starts to feel  _too much_ for him, like it’s too powerful for his body to contain.

Louis keeps screaming  _“Stop, leave him alone,”_  but no one’s listening to him, and his ribs feel like they’re cracking under the pressure of whatever’s bursting to get out of him.  He takes one more look at Harry’s tear-stained face, the way it’s scrunched up tight as his torment continues, the way his arms are wrapped around his torso like he’s trying to hold himself together-

And Louis breaks apart.

He feels everything leaving him, emptying out of his chest and it  _hurts,_ like fire shooting through his ribs.  A wave of dark energy explodes out of his chest, and it’s so powerful that Louis  _has_  to close his eyes against it, but when he forces them open moments later he sees that he’s _weaponized_ his feelings, throwing his fear and anger at its source - Tom’s father - so hard that the force of the dark spell knocks the other man right off of his feet.

The torture spell breaks, as does the one holding Harry high above the ground, and Harry crumples to the snowy earth a second later, twitching a bit from the residual pain.

Louis is still in shock from what just happened - he apparently just performed wandless  _and_  wordless magic - and for a second he forgets that he’s tied up and he tries to run forward to help Harry, before realizing that he still can’t move.  The Death Eaters are all staring at Louis like he’s grown a second head, but the glint in their eyes tells Louis that something about what he just did made him even  _more_  appealing to them. He feels uneasy and frightened, still.

Mr. Parker sits up, rubbing at his head and wincing.  He looks shaken but unharmed.

“You see that?” he asks the circle, gesturing to Louis as he gets back up on his feet. Harry still hasn’t moved voluntarily from where he’s slumped on the ground.   _“That’s_  why we can’t let him live.  Someone  _else_  doing magic like that?  The Dark Lord would never allow it.”

There are murmurings of agreement around the circle. Louis accidentally locks eyes with Tom and sees that the other boy is staring back at him, his mouth open in shock.

“I’ve never done that before,” Louis says hoarsely, addressing the group at large. His mind wildly tries to concoct some sort of appeal that will make the Death Eaters let him and Harry go. “I won’t - I won’t do it again, I swear, I just -  _please,_ please just let us go and I won’t do it again-”

“Bring him forward,” Mr. Parker says coldly, cutting Louis off. “Quickly, before he casts another spell. Oh, and wake his  _boyfriend_  up, I want him to watch.”

Louis stammers out more pleas, more tears leaking from his eyes as the two men holding him hoist him toward the cauldron once more. Frantically, Louis tries to harness whatever power had allowed him to attack Tom’s father, but he doesn’t feel anything inside his chest like he did when Harry was getting tortured.  He hears what sounds like a scuffle going on behind him as Harry starts to stir, then shouts of, “No - Louis! _Louis!”_

Louis tries to turn around so he can catch one last glimpse of Harry before he goes, but even as he struggles he’s bent unmercifully over the cauldron again. He can’t see a way out this time, doesn’t know who else could possibly show up to help him, and he feels Tom’s father shift closer, undoubtedly holding the knife again-

Then, suddenly, a jet of green light shoots so close to Louis that it misses him by an  _inch,_ whizzing past his cheek. Instead, it hits one of the men who’s holding him, who lets out a quiet grunt and then drops dead onto the ground.

The Death Eaters begin to shout in alarm as more jets of green and red light are shot toward them, and Louis falls backward from the weight of the dead man still holding on to his arm.  Another Killing Curse misses him, so close to his ear that he hears it sizzle, and hits the  _other_  Death Eater who was holding onto him, and as they both hit the ground Louis knows - whoever’s shooting is aiming for  _him._

“Get down!” yells Tom’s father, while other Death Eaters start firing curses back at the mysterious newcomers.

Still bound up tightly, Louis tries to crawl out from under the dead man pinned on top of him, staying low to the ground as more curses fly over his head.  The Death Eaters are distracted enough that no one’s trying to grab him yet, but only a few seconds later Louis feels the dead body being lifted off of him.

“Lou, Louis, are you okay?”

It’s Harry.

“Harry,” Louis croaks, nuzzling into his touch as Harry pulls them both behind the cauldron so that they’re somewhat sheltered from the spells and curses. “You shouldn’t - you sh-shouldn’t’ve come-”

“Shhh,” Harry shushes him, holding him close.  “Don’t be an idiot, ‘course I’m here.”

“You g-got hurt, though,” stammers Louis, so exhausted and relieved that he starts to cry while Harry tries to free him of the ropes tying him up.  It’s difficult business, considering they’re magical ropes and Harry doesn’t have a wand.

“M’alright, though,” says Harry, even though his limbs are occasionally twitching and his face is still twisted into a grimace.  “M’just fine, as long as I can figure out how to get you out of these ropes-”

 _“Protego Maxima!”_  one of the Death Eaters roars, and seconds later the noisy volley of spells ceases as the Shield Charm expands in the center of the field.

Louis can’t see anything, but he doesn’t want to peer around the cauldron and give his position away to the people trying to kill him with  _Avada Kedavra._ He tries to quiet himself down, still hiccuping in fear as Harry works at his ropes.

“Death Eater scum!” a distant voice yells.

“Who’s there?” Tom’s father yells back. He’s the only one whose voice Louis can actually identify. “Show yourselves!”

“We’re the Peace Crusaders!” someone else shouts. 

Louis glances at Harry frantically. “If we could just get a wand we could Disapparate,” he whispers.

“I lost mine,” Harry whispers back, tugging on the ropes and frowning. “And I brought yours, too, but it flew out of my pocket when I got Disarmed. I - oh! I do still have your glasses, I think.”

As Harry fumbles in his pocket, Louis hears, “Your plan isn’t going to work, Parker! No one’s getting resurrected tonight, we won’t allow it.”

Harry finally takes Louis’s glasses out of his pocket, none the worse for the wear. He slips them on Louis’s face and, though Louis doesn’t need a very high prescription, everything comes a little bit more into focus. 

“How’d you know we were here?” Mr. Parker yells. Louis hears a muffled  _thump_ , and he peers out from behind the cauldron to see green and red curses hitting the Shield Charm, trying to break through. “Hold it, hold the shield!”

“We had a guy on the inside,” comes the reply.  More  _thumps_  resound as the PC increase the volume of spells and the strain on the shield.

“Sullivan?” Tom’s father shouts. “We took care of him a month ago! He’s dead.”

“Steady, steady,” another Death Eater urges.

“Not just Sullivan,” comes a different voice.

The ranks of Death Eaters gasp. 

_“Crowley?”_

“You killed my  _best friend,_ Parker.”

“Your best friend was a traitor!” Tom’s father spits.

“For good reason,” the other man yells back.  “What you’re trying to do is an abomination.”

Louis isn’t quite following what’s going on, but he remembers the captured PC telling Ron Weasley that they had a spy in the neo-Death Eaters’ ranks.  With a start, he realizes that  _that’s_  how the PC must have found out about his date at Madam Puddifoot’s - Tom Parker told his father, who told all the Death Eaters,  _including_  the PC spy.

“Harry,” he whispers. “Harry, we have to get out of here,  _please-”_

“I’m trying,” Harry whispers back, “but I can’t do wandless magic, you  _know_  that-”

“There’s a Portkey,” Louis tells him quietly. “Tom and I took it here, and we might be able to take it back to the tunnels underneath Hogwarts.”

“Where is it?”

“I dunno,” says Louis. “Somewhere in the snow near where Tom’s standing.”

The fire under the cauldron has been keeping Louis mostly warm, but the wet chill of the snow is starting to seep through his thin robe, setting his teeth chattering.

“You’re too late!” Mr. Parker roars, startling Louis and Harry. “We’ve already got him here, and we’re just about to finish it.”

“What about these guys?” Harry mutters, unfazed by the theatrics going on near them.  He pokes at the dead Death Eaters piled next to them. “They’ve got to have wands, haven’t they?”

“They might not work for us,” Louis whispers back, but it’s the best plan they’ve got.

Harry leans over and rummages through one of the dead man’s pockets, staying close to the ground and then drawing back triumphantly as he clutches a wand.

“Dunno if it’ll work,” he whispers, pulling Louis’s arm away from his body as much as possible and pointing the wand in the gap between his arm and side.  “But -  _Diffindo!”_

The Severing Charm is weak from the borrowed wand, but it slightly frays the ropes tying Louis up.

“It sort of worked,” Louis points out quietly.

Suddenly, there’s an almighty  _crack!_ , and then the volume of spells is back at full force and full volume as the Death Eaters start shouting again. The Shield Charm must’ve finally broken.

Harry tenses up and starts to cast  _Diffindo_  over and over, cutting the ropes a little more each time.  They’re completely covered by the cauldron, but it’s only a matter of time before they have to leave their cover.

Finally, the ropes break, and Louis is able to easily free his arms and slip out of the rest of the ropes as they fall away.  The first thing he does is clutch Harry’s face in between his hands and kiss him harder than he possibly ever has.

“God, I love you,” Louis mumbles as they draw away, tears pooling in his eyes, “I don’t even - Harry-”

“I know,” says Harry, thumbing over his cheek and holding him just as tight.  They’re trembling in each other’s arms.  “I love you too. Now how are we going to get  _out_  of here?”

“Well, we c-could try to use this wand to Disapparate,” says Louis, “or we could see if we can find that Portkey.”

“The wand could barely do a charm,” Harry points out. “Not likely it’s going to let us Apparate.”

A red Stunning spell shoots over the top of the cauldron, whizzing past their heads and hitting a Death Eater behind them. 

“Plus we have to stand up to do it,” agrees Louis, feeling his head clear as they start to plan their escape. He has Harry back in his arms, that’s all that matters, and everything is going to be okay. “But I don’t know if we’re going to be able to find the Portkey in the snow.”

“It’s our best shot,” says Harry.  He kisses Louis again, so fiercely that Louis’s head spins. “Let’s go.”

Louis nods, and together they begin crawling on their elbows out from behind the cauldron, staying as low to the ground as they can.  Brightly colored jets of light are flying all around them, and Louis sees more than one person go down under a Killing Curse right as he watches.  It’s absolutely horrifying, but they’ve got to keep  _going,_ they have to save themselves before one side triumphs and re-focuses on them.

Tom Parker is no longer standing where he used to be, so Louis is kind of navigating blindly in terms of where the magical pocket-watch is.  Spells shoot over their heads, and screams of pain and fury are echoing all around them.  Louis almost wants to grab Harry’s hand for reassurance, but they need both arms to crawl.

“It was silver,” he yells to Harry over the din of the battle.  “Might be shining, I dunno.”

“Is that it?” Harry shouts, changing his direction slightly as they continue to move forward through the cold snow.

“Where?” Louis asks excitedly.

“Over there,” yells Harry, raising his right hand to point at something glinting in the snow a few meters away. It’s closer than Louis thought, and a wave of relief sweeps over him at the realization that it’s  _close,_ that they’re going to make it there in less than a minute, that they’re going to be able to get out of here. “You see it, Lou? It’s right-”

A jet of white light shoots under Harry’s outstretched arm and hits him right in the chest, cutting him off.

It happens so suddenly that Louis couldn’t have done a thing to stop it, but he still gasps in horror as Harry collapses into the snow.

“Harry?” he shouts, elbowing even closer to him and gripping the other boy’s shoulder. Please be okay  _please be okay_ \- “Harry, babe-”

Louis turns Harry over, trying to figure out what spell hit him, and then he gasps.

The snow where Harry had fallen is stained bright red with blood.

Panic bubbles up hot and fast in Louis’s throat as he turns Harry fully onto his back and sees a deep cut across his cheek spilling blood down his face.  But it couldn’t have caused that much widespread staining, unless - unless-

He rips open Harry’s robe and watches in terror as the front of his white t-shirt becomes more and more saturated with blood, staining all over until the whole shirt is red.

“Harry!” Louis cries, pushing up Harry’s t-shirt to see five deep cuts across his chest. Even as he watches, more blood is spilling out, flowing out of the cuts and running down Harry’s torso and into his robe. He’s never seen this before, doesn’t know what this is, but - maybe he can heal it with magic- “No no  _no_ no-”

He scrabbles around in the snow, trying to find the Death Eater’s borrowed wand, but he can’t  _find_  it, can only clench his fists helplessly in the snow as Harry twitches, still losing blood.

“Lou,” Harry mumbles, coughing.

“Harry,” gasps Louis, trying to press down on the deepest of the cuts to staunch the flow of blood.  “Harry, stay w-with me, babe, okay?”

It’s no use, the blood keeps flowing steadily out of the other cuts, and Louis starts crying when Harry gives another shuddering cough and blood bubbles out of his mouth.  He doesn’t know any Healing spells that could help this, he can only  _watch_  as the love of his  _life_  bleeds out right in front of him and he  _can’t do anything-_

“Lou,” Harry slurs again, his eyelids fluttering. He coughs violently. “Lou, l-love.”

This can’t be happening, this  _can’t be happening,_ but no matter how hard Louis presses down there are  _too many cuts_  and he starts to feel that same sense of grief and terror building up in his chest, pressing out against his ribcage, and he’s not sure if it’s him or Harry that’s screaming but it’s ringing in his ears, echoing around inside him and vibrating in his chest.

“Harry -  _Harry -_ don’t l-leave me n-now,  _please,_ st-stay with me-”

Harry’s eyes flutter closed, his lips stained red, and - and Louis can’t  _see_  straight through his tears, and his hands are red and his arms are red and _everything is red_  and he can’t live with himself and he can’t keep it  _in,_ he can’t keep it all in-

Louis clutches Harry to his chest and  _screams,_ an ear-splitting shriek of grief that ignites the burning sorrow pushing out against his chest and _explodes_ , pain and agony shooting out of him in dark waves of energy that he can’t control.  His eyes are closed but he  _hears_ what it sounds like, like a  _bomb_  going off, and when Louis opens his eyes again, there’s not a single person standing up in the field.  His jaw drops.

It’s substantially darker than it was with the glow of all the spells, but Louis can see that neo-Death Eaters and Peace Crusaders alike are lying motionless on the ground, leveled by whatever dark spell just shot out of Louis’s body. He looks back to Harry, still clutched in his arms, but he couldn’t heal Harry with his dark grief - Harry’s still bleeding out.

“Help!” Louis screams, uncaring who hears him but hoping someone will at least come to his aid before they kill him. “Somebody  _please_  help!”

The figures on the field begin to groggily get to their feet, dazed but alive, and Louis cries harder when he realizes none of them are going to help him.  Harry’s breathing sounds wet, like he’s struggling to get air in through the blood in his throat, and all Louis can do is cry and try to hold him close, rocking back and forth and screaming for help.

Before the two groups of extremists a can get their bearings, though,  _new_  spells begin to fly through the air, jets of light Stunning them and Disarming them as they try to regroup. Louis doesn’t know who’s arrived, but he hopes they can help him, because Harry’s breathing is getting shallower by the second and Louis is only able to  _hurt_  people, not  _heal_ people-

“Help, over h-here, I need help!” he yells, figuring he can’t be in any more danger than he’s already in. 

There’s new yelling and new voices, but Louis’s ears are buzzing so much he can’t tell what’s going on beyond the boy in his arms.

“Hazza, hold on, l-love, I’m gonna g-get you help,” he tells Harry, who doesn’t respond.

That’s when Louis starts to panic.  
“Harry?” he asks, shaking Harry slightly.

Harry doesn’t react.

“Harry? Harry -  _Harry!”_

Louis is almost hysterical, thumbing over Harry’s cheeks to try to bring back some true color to the pale skin covered in red, only able to smear blood all over his hands as he tries to wake Harry back up.

“Louis?”

Louis startles when he hears his name, but it wasn’t Harry who spoke it - it was - it’s  _Zayn’s_ voice _._ Louis tears his eyes away from Harry for a split second to see that Zayn’s making his way toward the two of them, dodging spells as he goes. Louis spares another second to look around and discovers that the fight’s back on, only this time the Peace Crusaders and neo-Death Eaters are  _both_  being attacked - a band of Aurors, Hogwarts professors, and students has arrived and is wreaking havoc with their spells on the extremists, who still seem to be weakened and disoriented from Louis’s burst of magic.  Louis is able to make out Liam, too, and Niall and Perrie, and Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, even Professor Weasley and - Professor  _McGonagall_  is there too, they’re all here, but - but they’re too late-

“Zayn!” he shouts desperately, his hands shaking as he tries to keep a grip on Harry’s still form. “Zayn, get help,  _please-”_

“I got it,” Zayn yells back, still running, and that’s when Louis sees that he’s being accompanied by Draco. “Is that - oh Godric, is that Harry?”

Louis starts crying again, the shock and fear overwhelming him once more, and he clings tightly to Harry’s body even when Zayn and Draco reach them.

Zayn’s speaking soothing words in his ear that Louis doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand  _anything_  anymore, only that he  _can’t lose Harry-_

“Louis, babe, you have to let him go,” Zayn is saying, his words coming into focus.

 _Never._ “No -  _no-”_

“Draco might be able to save him but you have to let him take a look,” Zayn insists, his words shaky but clear.  _“Now,_ Louis, come on.”

Zayn has to physically pull Louis back, and even then Louis just starts crying even harder and fighting to get free. He watches his Potions professor crouch over Harry’s still form, stark red against the snow.

“Cover us,” he orders Zayn urgently, ducking as a spell flies over his head.

Louis is vaguely aware of Zayn casting  _Protego_ , but all of his senses are focused on Harry right now - he can’t even  _think_ about anything else, and he continues trying to get out of Zayn’s arms so he can be at Harry’s side.

Draco immediately pulls his wand out, like he recognizes the spell, and begins to trace it over Harry’s wounds, about an inch or two above the skin.

_“Vulnera Sanentur… Vulnera Sanentur…”_

“What’s he doing, what’s he doing-” Louis is screaming, still trying to get back to Harry.

“He’s  _saving_ him, Louis, you have to stay still,” says Zayn, tightening his grip on Louis’s arms.

Red and green spells bounce off of the Shield Charm Zayn has cast, and with every deflection Louis jumps a little, tears still streaming down his face.

_“Vulnera Sanentur…”_

As Louis watches, the wound on Harry’s cheek stops spitting blood, and after a few more incantations of the song-like verse, the skin begins to knit itself back together again.  Draco wipes off some of the blood on Harry’s chest with the corner of his robe, and Louis can see that the same thing is happening with the deeper wounds on Harry’s torso.

_“Vulnera Sanentur…”_

“Is he h-healing him?” Louis blubbers, now hanging limply in Zayn’s arms and shuddering out tears through the cold as they both watch their professor work.

“I hope so,” murmurs Zayn.

Finally, Draco stops chanting, and he puts his wand back in his pocket. A few more swipes of his robe over Harry’s skin reveal that the wounds have closed up, settled into ugly scars instead. But Harry is still pale as a ghost, and he hasn’t woken up.

“How’d you know what to do? Is he - is he going to be alright?” Zayn asks, putting into words what Louis can’t.

“Had it done to me once,” says Draco with a grim frown, fitting his arms under Harry’s body. “It’s not something you forget easily.”

With Harry in his arms, Draco stands up, and so does Zayn, taking Louis with him and holding the Shield Charm in place.

“He’s lost a  _lot_  of blood, but right now he’s as stable as he’s going to get,” Draco continues. Harry’s body looks lifeless in his arms. “I need to take him to St. Mungo’s immediately.”

“Is he g-going to b-be okay?” Louis asks, feeling like he might pass out as more spells bounce off of the shield.

Draco frowns. “I’m… I’m not sure. You two should come with me.”

With that, he turns on the spot and Disapparates, taking Harry with him.

“Breathe, Lou, c’mon,” Louis hears Zayn murmur, and it’s only then that Louis realizes how short and shallow his breaths had been getting.

“We have to g-go,” Louis gets out, coughing as tears clog up his throat.

“I know, I just need to tell someone where we’re going first,” says Zayn. “Unless you’re hurt, too.”

“No, I’m - n-nothing got m-me,” says Louis.

“Alright, just a second.”

Clutching Louis to his side, Zayn shuffles across the field, keeping the Shield Charm in place to protect them.  Eventually, they end up right next to Liam, who’s in the middle of a duel, but when they get close enough, Liam becomes included in their bubble of protection and is able to take a break from fighting. He shakes out his wand hand.

“M’taking Lou to St. Mungo’s,” Zayn tells him quickly.  “Harry’s already there with Professor Malfoy. Needed someone to know.”

“Alright,” says Liam. “Should I come there after?”

“Yeah. Be careful, babe, alright?” Zayn asks, kissing Liam on the cheek.

Louis feels like he’s going to be sick.

“Got it,” says Liam. “You go on, I’ll join you soon!”

With that, Zayn breaks the shield, and Liam covers for them for the two seconds it takes for Zayn to turn on the spot, pulling Louis with him into nothingness as he Disapparates.

xxx

Louis  _is_  sick, as soon as they get to St. Mungo’s. He’s sick all over the floor of the lobby, and he can’t stop looking at the blood on his hands, the blood that’s all over him,  _Harry’s_  blood.

Two Healers rush over immediately, and as soon as they learn that the two of them are accompanying the bloody pair that arrived several minutes prior, they usher them upstairs, herding Louis into his own separate hospital room even though he promises he’s not hurt.

Zayn waits with Louis while a Healer checks him out, but for every second he spends getting prodded and poked Louis can’t help but wonder if Harry’s taking his last breath that very  _second_ and Louis  _isn’t there_  for him, and he doesn’t stop crying the whole time.

Finally, they give him the okay, and as Louis runs down the hall to Harry’s room, he can’t help but feel a horrible sense of déjà vu, even though this time it’s even  _worse_  than the last time Harry was in the hospital and it was  _Louis’s fault he was there._

It’s Louis’s fault this time, too. Louis couldn’t keep him safe -  _can’t_  keep him safe - and Harry keeps getting hurt because of him, Harry might even be  _dead_  because of him.

Zayn is hot on Louis’s heels as they race around the corner to Harry’s room, and Draco meets them at the door.

“How is he?  _How is he?”_  Louis asks him, a frantic edge to his voice as he tries to push past his professor.

“He lost over two liters of blood,” says Draco, “and the Healers had to resuscitate him-”

“But-” Louis interrupts-

“But he’s alive,” Draco finishes. “Harry’s going to make it. We have to stay out here while they help him, though, at least for now.”

Louis crumples to the floor with relief as he finally lets the fatigue get the best of him, sitting on the gleaming tile of the safe, secure hospital and crying hysterically into the leg of Zayn’s trousers.  He’s never felt so tired, never felt so relieved - but he’s also never felt so horrible.

xxx

After several long hours, a still-unconscious Harry is approved to have a single visitor in his room. Obviously, Zayn and Professor Malfoy let Louis go in, and Zayn doesn’t think he’s ever seen Louis move so fast.

Once the door closes after Louis, they can hear him sobbing, apologizing to Harry over and over, and it’s  _heartbreaking._ Zayn takes one look at Professor Malfoy and they both seem to silently agree that they shouldn’t be hearing this, so they wander down the hallway into one of the holding rooms only to discover twenty or so people waiting for them.

Everyone’s there: Liam, Niall, Perrie, most of the Aurors, Hermione, even Professor McGonagall - everyone that Zayn and his friends had managed to wake up and contact once they’d found Professor Malfoy patrolling the corridors at night. The group welcomes Zayn and Malfoy back with cheers, once they see that their faces don’t look especially grim.

“Wait a minute,  _none_  of you got hurt?” Zayn asks incredulously.

“Some of us did,” says Niall, pulling up his robes to show off a bandaged knee. “But we’ve had plenty of time to get ourselves fixed, mate - you lot were back there for  _hours.”_

“How’s Harry?” Perrie asks worriedly, as Liam draws Zayn into his arms and kisses him square on the mouth in front of everyone.

Zayn kisses back just as enthusiastically, caught up in the sheer relief of having Liam whole in his arms. He misses what Professor Malfoy tells everyone, but he trusts the other man to fill the rest of the crowd in on Harry’s condition.

When Liam finally lets Zayn go, they pull back just in time for Zayn to catch Harry Potter saying, “Quick thinking on the Healing, Malfoy.”

“Well, Potter,” says Professor Malfoy, his mouth twisting into a smirk, “we can’t all be blessed with the good fortune of having experienced _Sectumsempra_  for ourselves, now, can we?”

Harry Potter blushes and looks at the ground. Zayn wonders what that’s about.

“It’s just lucky I was one of the first ones to get to him,” Malfoy continues. “Otherwise I don’t know what would have happened.”

“I thought  _Sectumsempra_  was Snape’s own spell,” Ron Weasley puts in.

“He must’ve taught it to some of the Death Eaters while he was still a spy,” says Hermione.  “I know not all of them were convicted after the war.”

“Snape’s still biting us in the arse fifteen years later,” Ron grumbles. “I can’t believe this.”

“Don’t think any of this lot won’t be convicted, honestly,” says one of the Aurors.  “We’ve been chasing them for  _months.”_

Before any of them can continue, a tired-looking Healer arrives in the waiting room and says, “If three or four more visitors want to come with me, Mr. Styles has just woken up.”

Zayn immediately runs to the Healer’s side, as does Professor McGonagall, who undoubtedly wants to make sure every student in her care is doing alright. Hermione and Malfoy accompany them as well, and the five of them make their way down the hallway.

“Just a warning, they’re both crying,” the Healer whispers as they get close to Harry’s door.

"Are you sure we should go in, then?" asks Hermione.

The Healer nods. "It's not the happy kind of crying. I think they need someone to talk some sense into them."

"Merlin's pants," mutters Zayn.

Professor McGonagall looks at him sharply.

"Sorry, ma'am," Zayn says quickly, making Malfoy snort into the sleeve of his robe.

When the Healer pushes open the door to Harry's hospital room, Zayn immediately understands what she means. Harry's all bandaged up and looks like he's barely clinging to consciousness, but tears are running down his face and his mouth is twisted like he's trying not to cry outright. They're holding hands but Louis looks reluctant about it, and he's crying and trying to talk at the same time. 

"I brought some more people to see you," the Healer says loudly, making both of them jump.

"Hey, guys," Zayn says tentatively. "How are you feeling?"

"Not dead," Harry jokes feebly, trying to crack a smile even though he looks miserable.

"Like hell," says Louis, his lower lip trembling.

“That’s… that’s progress,” says Zayn slowly. “Everything alright?”

Harry shakes his head. "L-Lou's trying to break up with m-me."

Hermione gasps.

"What?" Zayn asks. He might've shouted. Whatever.

"It's not like that, I - I don't  _want_ to break up with you, Christ," stammers Louis, wiping at his eyes with his free hand.

"Then don't," suggests Hermione.

"But - don't you understand?" Louis yells, sounding angry through his tears. "If I  _don't,_ he's just - Harry's going to keep getting hurt because of me. I have to end this before he gets killed."

Zayn can tell Louis doesn't quite believe what he's saying, but Zayn can also tell that Louis wants more than  _anything_ to protect Harry, and he hasn't been able to do that while in a relationship with him. It's stupid, yeah, but he sort of understands where Louis is coming from.

"I haven't gotten hurt because of-" Harry starts.

"Don't even try that," snaps Louis. Even as he's yelling at Harry, Zayn notices he's still stroking over Harry's hand in a calming gesture. "You drank poison that was meant for me, you got  _tortured_ because you saved me from getting my throat cut, you - you-"

He stops talking when his voice breaks. It feels like the entire room is holding a collective breath.

"You bled out in my fucking  _arms,"_ Louis whispers eventually, his cheeks wet. "I can't have you go through that again because of me, love. We can't - I can't - I'm not good for you."

He stands up like he's going to leave but Harry just holds on tighter, his face twisting miserably.

"Haz, you're always g-going to be a target if you stay with m-me," says Louis, his voice breaking, "and I can't - I can't let you d-do that, babe, understand?"

"With all due respect, Mr. Tomlinson, I think you've gone completely barmy," cuts in Professor McGonagall.

Hermione gasps. Malfoy lets out a great honking laugh that he immediately tries to cover up as a cough. Zayn pinches himself to make sure he isn't dreaming.

"W-what?" Louis asks.

"The time for such foolish displays of altruism has long since passed," says the old woman, striding further into the room and standing next to Harry's bed. "Your actions might've been appropriate a month ago when your life was still in danger, yes, but every single criminal at the scene was apprehended."

She pats Harry's free hand lightly, avoiding the IV needle sticking out in the middle.

 _"Meaning,_ that you are now able to live without worrying that your heritage may get you into trouble. The threat is gone, Mr. Tomlinson, so stop feeling sorry and blaming yourself and let's have a proper hug."

Louis tilts his head to the side, like he's trying to decide if he's hallucinating, but then eventually he crosses over to the other side of the bed and tentatively gives Professor McGonagall a hug.

She chuckles and pats him on the back. "I meant Mr. Styles, my dear boy."

"Oh," Louis stammers, backing up and looking at Harry. "I - okay."

A bruised and bandaged but very much  _alive_ Harry holds out his arms, and Zayn feels like he's not the only one chanting  _kiss kiss kiss_ in his head as Louis leans down to wrap his arms around his boyfriend and tuck his face into Harry's neck. It's desperate and close and it goes on for a long time, during which time the Healer leaves the room and Professor McGonagall retreats back to her position by the door.

Finally, Louis draws back and presses a sweet kiss to Harry's lips.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Harry mumbles, grinning up at him through wet eyes, and they both start shaking so hard that Louis isn’t sure if they’re giggling hysterically or crying. Probably a bit of both.

“Oh, Merlin, I forgot that was today,” says Malfoy. “Astoria’s gonna kill me.”

“Aww,” Hermione coos, placing a hand over her heart.

Zayn exhales in relief, feeling his insides untwist. Even Malfoy looks happy as Harry and Louis laugh into each other’s mouths, holding each other carefully as they try to calm down and stop crying.

Things get a bit awkward when the kiss deepens, though.

"Alright," says Zayn loudly, when Louis and Harry start full-on snogging. "Might not want to-"

"I love you so much," Louis whispers, climbing onto the bed next to Harry and continuing to kiss him.

"-do this in front of the teachers," Zayn finishes, sighing. He turns to Professor McGonagall. "We should go, probably."

"Just as well," says McGonagall, making a show of dusting her hands off. "My work here is done."

She strolls out into the hallway, leaving a shell-shocked Zayn, Hermione, and Malfoy to follow after her.

"What should we tell the rest of them?" asks Malfoy, gingerly closing the door behind them.

"That Harry and Louis are back to normal, probably," says Hermione. "D'you know I caught them going at it in an empty classroom once?"

"I'd believe it," Malfoy snickers.

Zayn laughs and smiles into his hand, feeling fully and completely content in a way he never quite has before - like everything in his life and the lives of his friends has finally slotted into place. “We can just tell them that all is well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, any comments are welcome either on here or on my [tumblr](http://povverbottoms.tumblr.com)! :)
> 
> <3


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :')

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finally complete. I'd like to express my gratitude to everyone that's stuck with this story, and the encouraging messages I've received throughout. This story took me a full year to put out, but I'm very proud of it and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Thank you so much.

**Epilogue: Three Years Later**

As a third-year junior Curse Breaker for the Ministry of Magic, Zayn Malik should have long ago developed the inability to be surprised.  Unfortunately, there are still things that manage to shock him.  Things that fall into this category include, but are not limited to, Harry and Louis being MIA for their _own fucking wedding._

“I’ve looked everywhere!” Zayn rages quietly, kneading his fingers over his temples.  He and the other groomsmen are backstage, behind the lavish outdoor pavilion that’s been set up for them in a field at a wizarding country club near Harry’s house. 

“Well, it’s not like both of them got cold feet at the same time,” says Niall stupidly.

“Right – they wouldn’t _get_ cold feet, _period,”_ hisses Zayn.

Ed laughs, adjusting his tux. “Well, wherever they are, they’re probably together,” he reasons. “So if we find one of ‘em we find both of ‘em. Are you _sure_ you’ve looked everywhere?”

Zayn nods, annoyed. It doesn’t help that most of them are sporting wicked hangovers from last night’s joint bachelor party, which had raged til 3 in the morning at a club in wizarding London. As Louis’s best man, Zayn supposes he should have kept a better eye on him, but Louis is hard to corral even when he _isn’t_ drunk and horny. 

Zayn looks around for his fiancé, eventually finding Liam by the pavilion entrance talking hurriedly with Anne.  He’s clearly trying to stall for time, which Zayn appreciates – all of the wedding guests are _already_ seated inside the pavilion, patiently waiting for the ceremony to start, and when your guest list includes the likes of Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, it doesn’t seem polite to keep them waiting this long.

“I hope they made it home alright after last night,” says Stan, looking worriedly toward the main building of the country club like he expects Harry and Louis to appear any moment.

Niall snorts. “Are you _kidding?_ They were the first ones to leave ‘cause they couldn’t keep it in their pants any longer! Me and Ed were drinking for at _least_ another hour before we realized that ‘going to the loo’ bullshit was a load of crock.”

“Merlin, I hate them so much,” Zayn groans, putting his head in his hands.

Along with Ed, who is Harry’s best man, Zayn spent a _lot_ of time organizing this damn wedding, planning it meticulously so it could go off without a hitch. He’d apparently _failed_ to adjust for the fact that his two best friends can’t keep their hands off each other and are hell-bent on making his life difficult.

Liam comes jogging over to them a second later. “Anne said she hasn’t heard from them either, but she said she could make some sort of speech to stall for time.”

Before he’s even finished talking, shrieks of laughter fill the air as ten or twelve children run out of the pavilion’s entrance and start to play in the field.

“Plus a lot of the kids inside were already getting restless, so we decided we might as well let them out to play until the grooms show up,” Liam adds.

Zayn spots Louis’s twin sisters among the children who are playing, but he doesn’t recognize the rest of them.  One of the boys dressed in a child-size tuxedo comes running up to them, looking awed, a few of his friends following him with identical looks of wonder on their face.

“I thought Aunt El was _kidding!”_ one of them exclaims. “It really is him!”

Zayn isn’t sure which one of them the boy is referring to.

“Hey, mister, is it true you’re Keeper of the Tutshill Tornados?” another asks, pointing at Liam.

“Sure is,” says Liam, smiling as he kneels down to shake their eager hands. “Liam Payne, pleased to meet you.”

Oh. Right. Zayn sometimes forgets he’s engaged to a famous Quidditch player.

“I have your p-poster on my wall at home,” one of the other kids tells Liam, looking like he’s about to cry from how overwhelmed he is.  “And thanks to you my, my mum said she might get me my first broom for Christmas!”

“That’s wonderful to hear,” Liam says. “And if you’re good about practicing, you could be better than me one day.”

“No way!” the kid says, shaking his head.

“Sort of makes me wish I’d gone professional,” says Stan, watching as the children surround Liam and start asking him more questions.

Zayn tries to ignore the weird little flip-flop his stomach does at seeing Liam being so good with kids, in a _tuxedo,_ no less. Fuck.

“Same here,” Niall says. “Apparently being a professional Seeker is _really_ stressful, though, and I don’t know if me heart could’ve handled it.”

“S’probably better than no job at _all,_ you freeloader,” Ed teases him, elbowing him in the ribs.

Niall holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, mate, unless I stop dating a hotel heiress I don’t see any need to get a job.”

That one had been a bit of a surprise for everyone – a year after they graduated from Hogwarts, Perrie had found out that an extremely distant uncle of hers, whom she’d never met but who owned a chain of wizarding hotels in prime holiday destinations around the Mediterranean sea, had recently passed away.  Apparently, he’d had such a bad relationship with his immediate family that he’d left the hotels, and his _entire fortune_ , to a random niece or nephew whose name he literally picked out of a hat, and it ended up being Perrie. Niall and Perrie were still going strong then – still _are,_ too, and now they’re absolutely loaded. 

“I still can’t believe that,” says Stan.

“It’s still surreal two years later,” says Niall. “Not sure when it’s going to sink in.”

Zayn’s getting antsier by the second, and making small talk and watching Liam play with kids isn’t doing much to calm him.

“I’m gonna go do another sweep of the main building,” he announces suddenly, cutting Niall off mid-anecdote. “Send me a Patronus if they show up before I’m back.”

“Will do,” says Ed. “I’ll hold down the fort here.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Zayn says, rolling his eyes and grumbling to himself as he walks away about just who the _better_ best man is.  He has a wedding to save.

xxx

“I can’t _believe_ you,” Louis breathes out, watching incredulously as Harry removes two little packets of lube from the pocket of his dress shirt. “You had this all planned out since this morning, didn’t you?”

Harry laughs, leaning forward to nip at his lips again. “Thought that was obvious when I dragged you into a storage closet,” he mumbles into Louis’s mouth before drawing back.

Louis moans, tilting his head back as Harry presses him into the wall and bites his neck lightly.  Harry’s trousers and pants are around his knees and Louis’s are flung somewhere on the floor, and their dress shirts are still on but both of their tuxedo coats are crumpled on the floor as well.  It’s almost embarrassing how fast Louis got hard, thickening up right in his trousers when Harry shoved him into this random closet and locked the door from the inside, and his cock was practically _dripping_ by the time Harry got his hand around both of them several minutes later.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Louis mutters, shoving Harry’s mouth away from his neck and kissing the other boy hard on the mouth instead.  “Wanna feel you.”

Harry nods hastily, his hands slipping as he frantically tries to tear open one of the packets.  He can’t seem to tear his lips away from Louis’s for more than a second, though, and Louis grins against him, realizing that the smug Harry who manhandled him and pressed him against the wall not one minute ago is gone, replaced by the same devoted, overwhelmed Harry that Louis has always known.

Finally, Harry manages to get the lube open, coating two of his fingers in the slick and tossing the empty packet onto the floor.

“How are we going to–” Louis starts to ask.

In answer, Harry grabs one of Louis’s legs and hoists it up until it’s hitched around his waist, and Louis cuts himself off and gasps out as he’s suddenly exposed.

“Gonna go so slow,” Harry murmurs, his eyes hooded as he holds onto Louis’s leg with his clean hand and starts to pet around his hole with slick fingers. “Gonna wait til you’re–”

“We don’t have _time_ for slow,” Louis hisses, trying to keep his composure as Harry dips just a single fingertip inside him.  “Babe, come _on.”_

Harry just grins and kisses him again, swallowing the moan Louis lets out as he pushes his finger all the way in. Louis is still a little sore from their escapades last night, but it just makes it feel even _better_ as Harry’s long finger curls inside him. _God,_ he loves this so much.

Harry’s so careful with him, too, twisting another finger inside slowly like he’s afraid Louis is going to come apart at the seams if he goes much faster.  The stretch burns a little but Louis _loves_ it, arches his back to try to get Harry’s fingers deeper and rubs his leaking cock against Harry’s in the process.

 _“Fuck,”_ Harry groans, crowding in closer til he’s taking up all of Louis’s space. He starts to lazily grind his hips forward, teasing Louis’s cock with little brushes and maddeningly light friction as he fucks his fingers in and out, scissoring them apart slightly and making Louis tremble.

With his leg held up around Harry’s waist, Louis can’t really adjust his position much without losing his balance, so he just wiggles around a bit to try to get Harry to go faster.  Harry doesn’t seem inclined to do that, though, and he grins cheekily and presses their foreheads together so they’re breathing each other’s air as he slows his fingers down even _more._

“Harry,” Louis whines at the maddeningly slow glide, “Haz, _please–”_

He gasps and buries his face in Harry’s neck when Harry curls his fingers just right and catches Louis’s prostate.  He can feel Harry’s pulse like this, feels it speed up as Harry focuses his attention on that spot, brushing over it again and again with the pads of his fingers.

“You feel so good,” Harry whispers, curling his fingers expertly and shoving forward with his hips. Louis cries out into his neck, his legs trembling, and decides a second later that enough is _enough._ They’ll have time for more of this – for two whole fucking _weeks_ of this – on their honeymoon, starting tonight, and Louis needs Harry inside him _now_ before he explodes from desire and before they’re late to their own wedding.

Trying to ignore the heady pleasure radiating out from his prostate, Louis pulls back a bit and sticks his hand in Harry’s shirt pocket to retrieve the other packet of lube.

“M’not done teasing you yet,” Harry mumbles, smiling so big his dimple shows. 

Louis narrows his eyes, ripping open the packet and squeezing lube all over his hand.  Before Harry can move, Louis is reaching between them and firmly taking Harry’s cock in his slick hand, his grip tight and warm as he starts to stroke him.

“Oh god,” Harry groans, immediately folding in on himself as Louis jerks him mercilessly. “No, f-fuck, Lou, I’ll come too soon–”

“M’not done teasing you yet,” Louis parrots back at him, laughing breathlessly as he feels Harry’s fingers twitch inside him. He thumbs over the head of Harry’s dick and feels a little warm drop of precome bead out, and Harry gasps and presses their foreheads together again, like he’s having trouble holding himself up.

“Please, wanna – need to come – inside you,” whispers Harry, his voice shaking.

Louis sucks in a breath, surprised at how _hot_ those words make him even though Harry tells him this at least once a week.

“Nothing’s stopping you,” Louis whispers back, laughing quietly at how fast Harry springs into action after he’s spoken. He draws his fingers out carefully, his breathing heavy as he wipes them on Louis’s thigh.

“Oi,” Louis snaps, not enjoying the feeling of lube where it doesn’t belong, but he forgets about it the next second because Harry is gripping his bum with both hands and hoisting him up against the wall, _fuck,_ and it happens so suddenly that Louis gasps and wraps his legs around Harry’s torso reflexively. He’s still holding on to Harry’s cock, making them both groan as his slick hand jerks suddenly in surprise.

“Think people are wondering where we are?” Harry murmurs, shifting his grip a little and squeezing Louis’s arse in his hands.

Probably – they probably are, but Louis doesn’t _care,_ too caught up in the whirlwind of desire Harry’s spun for him. “Inside, _please,_ inside–”

“Help me out, Lou, c’mon,” pleads Harry, catching on to Louis’s desperate urgency as his dick twitches in Louis’s fist. 

Louis does so as best he can, trying to keep his breathing steady as he helps Harry shift his hips forward and lines up the wet head of Harry’s cock with his slick, stretched hole.  It’s warm, and the skin of Harry’s dick is soft but the blunt pressure of his hardness is overwhelming and Louis lets go, nodding at Harry to move as he moans and tries to stay in position.

Then Harry pushes forward with his hips, and at the same time he relaxes his grip on Louis’s arse just a fraction so that Louis’s body slides down the wall a bit and opens up around his cock.

“Oh fuck, oh _fuck,”_ Louis whimpers, trying to relax his hole as Harry presses inside. They’d kind of rushed through the prep, but Louis couldn’t have waited another fucking _second_ to have his fiancé inside him, and so he relishes the slight burn as his body stretches to accommodate Harry’s big cock.

Louis squeezes his legs tightly around Harry’s torso, trying to hold as still as he can.  Harry shudders and lets him drop a little more, pushing inside inch by inch until his balls are presses snugly against Louis’s arse. He’s shaking too, a bit, and he leans forward to join their lips together and lick his way into Louis’s mouth.

Louis feels so full, and there’s so much pressure from the love bursting in his body that he feels like he can barely hold it all in.  He loops his arms around Harry’s neck and kisses him back, twining their tongues together and moaning happily because he’s got all of Harry inside him.

His moan turns into a sharp cry, though, when Harry finally draws out and slams back inside, hitting Louis’s prostate so hard that Louis claws at his back and actually rips his dress shirt with how hard he clenches his fists.

“Shit,” Harry groans, rolling his shoulders and undoubtedly feeling the way Louis has ripped his shirt apart.  “Shit, babe, you’re so – fuck–” and that’s all he can get out before he’s moving his hips just the way Louis likes it, fast and hard and desperate so that all Louis can do is hold on and try not to break apart from how roughly he’s getting pounded.

“So good – Harry, _Harry,_ so good, oh my god,” Louis moans, his head lolling back as his cock bounces against the starched material of his dress shirt, getting it messy and wet.

Harry slows down for a second, and Louis is about to groan in protest before he realizes what his fiancé’s doing – he’s shifting his arms one by one so that instead of gripping Louis’s bum, he’s bracing Louis’s legs over his arms, pressing his hands into the wall and spreading Louis completely open.

“You’re so hot,” Harry mutters, dipping back in for a quick kiss as he picks up the pace of his hips once again. It’s even _better_ like this, and it makes Louis cry out so loud that he almost misses Harry’s quiet murmur of “I love you.”

“Love you more,” Louis moans happily, threading his fingers into Harry’s curls and tugging sharply as he’s bounced up and down on Harry’s cock, “always love you more–”

“Not a _chance,”_ growls Harry, laughing breathlessly as he kisses Louis again to silence any further protests.

It’s incredible, it’s so, _so_ good, and Louis is just starting to feel his orgasm building in his tummy when there’s a sharp knock on the door, startling them and breaking Harry’s rhythm.

For a wild moment, Louis wants to pretend that he didn’t hear it, just wants to keep fucking Harry like they have all the time in the world, but then the knocks come again.

“Lou? Harry? Is that you guys?” comes Zayn’s voice.

Harry groans, not in pleasure but in frustration, and rests his head against Louis’s shoulder, making no move to pull out or set Louis down or even respond to Zayn.

“Yeah,” Louis replies brokenly after a few moments, not sure why Harry’s expecting _him_ to carry on a coherent conversation when he’s literally suspended several feet above the ground sitting on a dick.

“What the _fuck,_ guys? Your wedding was supposed to _start_ ten minutes ago!” Zayn thunders through the door.

“Oh, shit,” Harry mutters into Louis’s skin, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

“We’ll, uh – give us five minutes, Zee, we’ll be–”

“No, not five minutes, _now,”_ insists Zayn, sounding annoyed.

Louis huffs, stroking through Harry’s curls as he yells back, “Zayn Javaad Malik, I am _not_ walking down the aisle on my wedding day with a _boner._ You give us five minutes or you’re not my best man anymore.”

Zayn gasps. “You wouldn’t do that.”

“I just might,” says Louis shakily, squirming as Harry starts to gently roll his hips once more. “Come _on,_ Zee, give us a break.”

“Fine, fine,” says Zayn. “I’ll be coming back in five minutes so you’d better be done by then.”

Louis hears him walk away.

The next second he tugs on Harry’s hair lightly and says, “C’mon, H, know you don’t need five minutes to make me come.”

Harry grins filthily, fitting their mouths together as he starts to fuck Louis hard again. 

A couple minutes later, Louis is back to being bounced around like a ragdoll, holding on to Harry’s ripped shirt for dear life as Harry slams into his prostate again and again.

“Close, love,” Harry mutters, nipping at his jaw.

“So’m I,” moans Louis, hiccupping in pleasure and trying to keep his eyes open so he can see the way Harry’s jaw and throat are working, clenched tight as he puts all of his energy into fucking Louis. 

It’s so hot, _Harry’s_ so hot that Louis lets go of his ruined shirt with one hand a second later to wrap it around his cock, which has ruined Louis’s own shirt with how much precome he’s leaked onto it.

“Gonne come, _please,_ H,” he whines, pulling Harry in with his other hand and mashing their lips together as he feels himself start to peak.

Louis comes _hard,_ screaming into Harry’s mouth and clenching up so tightly around him as he shoots all over his shirt, come dripping hot over his fingers.  Harry’s arms shake where they’re holding Louis up, his hips stuttering at the rhythmic spasms of Louis’s hole around him, and seconds later he’s whining too, panting and slowing his thrusts down as he fills Louis up.

Louis isn’t sure if he’s going to be able to walk after this, honestly – _shit,_ that was good.

“Holy fuck,” Harry mumbles eloquently into Louis’s neck a second later. They both start laughing breathlessly, and then Louis moans at what that does to the wet slide of Harry’s softening cock inside him.

“You made me come all over my nice shirt,” he admonishes Harry jokingly, still trying to get his bearings back.

“You _ripped_ my nice shirt completely open,” Harry points out, biting softly at his neck before gently pulling out and lowering Louis to the ground.

Louis makes a face when he feels some of Harry’s come drip out of him and slide warmly down the backs of his thighs.  In the right circumstances, it’s one of his favorite things to feel, but not standing upright half-dressed in a semi-public place.  “Nothing a couple spells won’t fix,” he reminds Harry, shifting uncomfortably as more come leaks out.

“True,” says Harry, kissing him on the nose and bending down to pick up his wand. “Dunno a spell that’s gonna get the wrinkles out of our tuxes, though.”

“I bet Zayn does,” says Louis. “If we’re extra nice to him he might even tell us.”

Harry snorts, casting a Cleaning Spell between Louis’s legs to get rid of the mess.  “Doubt it. He sounded _livid.”_

Louis laughs too, bending down to pick up his own clothes and wand now that he’s clean.  “Bet our mums are more pissed than he is.”

Both of them shudder at how true that probably is as they pull various articles of clothing back on, casting _Reparo_ and _Scourgify_ as necessary along the way until they’re mostly presentable again.

“Hope Zayn tells us that wrinkle spell,” Harry says, looking grimly at his once-pressed trousers.

“Of course he will,” Louis tells him, pulling him in for one last lingering kiss before they unlock the closet door and step out into the hallway. “Now let’s go get married, my love.”

xxx

By the time the ceremony’s over, there isn’t a single dry eye in the whole pavilion.  Louis can probably take some of the credit for that, given that his vows were the sappiest words and endearments he’d ever produced in his _life,_ but the majority of the credit probably has to go to Harry, who burst into tears during his own vows like an _idiot_ and set Louis off crying as well, causing both of their mums to choke up and then start sobbing too.

But everyone’s smiling through their tears now, standing up and cheering as Louis and Harry run excitedly down the aisle, newly wed and holding each other’s hands tightly.  Louis’s teary eyes are blurring their faces together, but he sees their families, and their friends from Hogwarts, and Harry’s closest colleagues from the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures: Beasts Division at the Ministry, and Louis’s friends from Healing school and subsequent colleagues at St. Mungo’s, and some of their Hogwarts professors, including Draco and Professor Weasley and their families.  Everyone’s here, eager to celebrate with them, and Louis has never felt so full to bursting with love in his _life._

Once Louis and Harry exit the pavilion, staff members from the country club transform the traditional interior and rows of embellished white chairs into many small tables all centered around a glowing dance floor.

Harry leans his head on Louis’s shoulder as they watch the staff work, observing all of their guests milling around and trying to find their assigned tables and placecards. 

“It’s kind of weird seeing all these people in the same place,” Louis says, still squeezing Harry’s hand tightly.

“Yeah,” Harry agrees.  “I don’t think my nan’s met your nan before, that should be interesting.”

Louis snorts in agreement.  Jay’s mother – Louis’s other grandmother – had passed away before Louis was born, but now Louis has Rose to spoil him and dote on him.

It was kind of weird when he’d had to introduce Rose and Chester to his mum three years ago, because Louis had to do a _lot_ of explaining to his mum beforehand, including breaking the news to her about the way his father was killed – even the fact that Edward Austin _was_ killed.  Jay had been definitely upset by the news, but Louis had figured that it was worse to keep her in the dark – he’d thought that she deserved to know the truth.

That had meant that Rose and Chester were able to meet Louis’s mum and sisters, and then Louis’s whole family was able to meet Rose and Chester’s other children and grandchildren. They have quite a big family, it turns out, and almost all of them had turned up for the wedding today.

“I think one of my Veela cousins is already trying to hit on Liam,” says Harry, pointing the two of them out by one of the tables.  “Or maybe she’s going for Zayn, I’m not sure.”

“Well, Liam does have the _famous_ thing going for him, now,” says Louis.

“Yeah, but Zayn has the whole _Zayn_ thing.”

Both of them crack up, and Louis turns to press a kiss to Harry’s cheek.

“Let’s go back in, Lou,” Harry suggests, letting go of Louis’s hands but only so he can wrap his arm around Louis’s shoulders.  “People are already getting their cameras out.”

Louis’s face is starting to hurt from how big he’s been smiling – for _hours_ already, it feels like – but he walks in with Harry anyway, grinning even bigger as their guests let out another cheer.

xxx

While dinner is being served, dozens of people come up to the head table to bestow their well-wishes on Harry and Louis. After a half-hour of this, everything starts to blur together for Louis, who only remains grounded to the present moment because of Harry’s hand on his thigh.

Of course, when Harry Potter arrives to congratulate them, that part kind of sticks in Louis’s brain.

“Congratulations, you two,” Harry Potter says, shaking both of their hands.

“Thank you so much,” says Harry Styles. Louis’s fiancé – no, _husband,_ now, _shit –_ still gets a little star-struck around this Harry, and Louis doesn’t blame him – Louis would, too, if he hadn’t been required to attend weekly meetings with the Auror for three years after graduating from Hogwarts.

Once the apprehended Death Eaters and Peace Crusaders alike had testified unanimously that Louis had practically destroyed the entire field with the force of some dark spell that radiated out of him, the Wizengamot had ruled that Louis undergo mandatory weekly consultation for three years with a wizard qualified to help him safely control his powers. And, ironically, the best-qualified wizard for the job had been Harry Potter, on account of being the only other wizard alive who had ever experienced some measure of Voldemort’s influence in his blood.

After a mere month of consultation, Harry Potter had figured out that the destructive powers Louis was capable of only displayed themselves when people he loved (specifically, Harry Styles) were being hurt and Louis wasn’t able to do anything about, wasn’t able to help them.  After further reasoning that, once the neo-Death Eaters and Peace Crusaders were all locked up in Azkaban, no one else had any motivation or desire to hurt Harry _or_ Louis, Harry Potter had deemed their sessions a success, saying, “And if anyone _does_ end up hurting your boyfriend again, they deserve whatever you’re able to dish out.”

Of course, Louis and Harry Potter had still been technically required to meet every week for the rest of the three years, so they had taken to going out to brunch on Saturday afternoons. They’ve actually become quite close, even though they’re at vastly different life stages – Harry Potter is getting ready to send his second-youngest off to Hogwarts soon, and Louis is just getting married.

“Are the kids all here?” Louis asks Harry Potter, who nods.

“Yeah, they’re around here somewhere. Not sure where James has gotten off to, but Al is getting ready to show off his moves on the dance floor.”

“Is he now?” asks Louis, raising an eyebrow.

They both burst into laughter, knowing perfectly well that’s not true.

Once dinner is finished, an emcee takes over and announces that it’s time for the newlywed couple’s first dance. The guests all coo happily, and a couple wolf-whistles (probably from Niall) can be heard as Louis and Harry take the floor, wrapping their arms around each other as the music starts to play.

The song they’d picked for their first dance is called “All of Me,” by some Muggle singer called John Legend. Ironically, Harry had first heard it when listening to Nick Grimshaw’s breakfast show on the WWN a few years back, and he’d called Louis over _immediately_ and made Louis listen as well. The song is so pretty that it almost always makes Louis feel like he’s going to cry, so he tucks his face into Harry’s neck and tries to keep his breathing steady as they hold each other close.

Speaking of Nick Grimshaw – they’d invited him to their wedding, the invitation a sincere one on Harry’s part and a completely mocking one on Louis’s, but it looks like he hasn’t decided to show up after all.  Ah, well. It’s probably for the best, because while Louis himself has gotten over that whole Yule Ball debacle back in their seventh year, a lot of his friends _haven’t,_ because they had to deal with how sad Louis was.

Another person who hasn’t made an appearance is Tom Parker, whom the Wizengamot had let off with two hundred hours of community service once Louis had testified that, yes, Tom was absolutely a _prat,_ but he wasn’t fully informed of the situation and had no intention of killing Louis that night in the field. Louis hadn’t actually expected Tom to show up to the wedding – he hasn’t really seen him since the trial – but he figured that the invitation was more of a nice gesture than anything else. After all, Louis and Harry are pretty much adults now, being twenty-one and having jobs and being _married_ and all, and “nice gestures” are definitely things adults are supposed to do.

Harry’s hand slides a little lower on Louis’s back and Louis smiles into his neck, kissing the soft skin gently before pulling back and beaming at him.

After that dance is over, Harry and Louis get to dance with each other’s mums.  Anne looks radiant in a soft periwinkle gown, and Louis grins over at Harry, who’s twirling Jay across the floor in her pastel green dress.

“I’m so happy for you two, love,” Anne whispers to him, hugging him tightly.

“Me too,” says Louis, holding up his arm so she can spin under it. They both laugh. “Does this mean I can call you ‘Mum’ now?”

“You didn’t need to wait until now,” says Anne. She kisses him on the cheek and Louis wrinkles his nose, grinning and ducking as people try to get cheeky pictures of Anne’s motherly affection.

After the mother-son dance, Jay and Anne insist on having tons of pictures taken of them and their sons, smooshing Harry and Louis together and wrapping their arms around the pair. 

“Mum – _Mum,_ enough,” Louis laughs, not having the heart to resist as many pictures as his mother wants.

Once Anne and Jay finally leave the two of them alone, Louis sees Zayn laughing at them from his spot at a nearby table.

“Hey, this is gonna be you in a year or so, Malik,” he yells over to Zayn. “I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you!”

Zayn blushes and glances over at Liam, his laughter ceasing but the smile staying on his face.

Once other couples have started to make their way onto the dance floor, Louis ends up dancing with his grandmother.

“You and your new husband do complement each other very well,” Rose tells him quietly, her kind eyes crinkled as she smiles.

“What, like a light and dark sort of thing?” Louis asks. He’s always thought of Harry as _light,_ as something that always makes his world brighter. “I can see that, actually. He’s probably the light to my dark.”

Rose shakes her head as he leads her around the dance floor. “No, silly child. Everyone has a bit of light and a bit of dark inside them. I just meant that you look nice next to each other.”

“Oh,” says Louis, blushing at how sappy he just got in front of his nan. “Well, uh – that, too. Thanks, Nan.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” says Rose. “I’m just so glad we found each other, even if it was a bit later than I would’ve liked.”

“Me too,” Louis tells her, feeling a little bit choked up.

Once the song ends and Rose goes to sit back down with Chester, Louis pulls Harry off of the dance floor and leads him out of the pavilion, hoping they can have five minutes or so of privacy.

“What’s up?” Harry asks him, smoothing his hands up and down Louis’s arms.

“Just wanted to see you,” says Louis. He wraps Harry up in a tight hug, his heart feeling like it’s too big for his body to contain. “Husband.”

Harry makes a happy noise. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Louis says, not interested for once in making this into a competition.  He knows they can’t compete with each other, not on that front – they’re equals, husband and husband, together for the rest of their lives.

And as Harry pulls him up for a kiss and magical fireworks start to go off above the pavilion, drawing gasps from the crowd, Louis feels on top of the _world._ He can’t _wait_ to start their new life together – _together –_ and he can already tell it’s going to be an eventful one.

* * *

_You are the blood flowing through my fingers_   
_All through the soil and up in those trees_   
_You are electricity and you are light_   
_You are sound itself and you are flight_   
  
_You are the blood flowing through my fingers_   
_All through the soil and up in those trees_   
_You are electricity and you are light_   
_You are sound itself and you are flight_   
  
_You are the blood flowing through my fingers_   
_All through the soil and up in those trees_   
_You are the blood flowing through my finger_   
  
_You are the blood that I may see you, that I may see you_   
_You are the blood in me_   
  
_You are the earth on which I travel, on which I travel_   
_You are the earth under my feet_   
_That I may travel, that I may travel with you_   
  
_You are the earth on which I write the circumstances_   
_You say what you want from me_   
  
_You are the solitude that goes against me, that goes against me_   
_You are the choir in which I dream_   
_In which I sleep, in which I wander_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm on [tumblr](http://povverbottoms.tumblr.com) if you ever want to give any feedback/just want to say hi. 
> 
> Signing off on YATB for the final time,
> 
> Emma xx


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